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Cinema Junkie by Beth Accomando

Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers
Joaquin Phoenix stars in Buffalo Soldiers

"Where there is peace the warlike man attacks himself." This quote by Friedrich Nietsche opens Buffalo Soldiers (opening September 5 at Madstone Theaters), a film set on a U.S. army base just outside of Stuttgart, West Germany in 1989.

The Berlin Wall is about to fall and peace threatens to make life on base unbearably dull. As specialist Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) puts it, you've got all these highly trained soldiers with nothing to kill but time-and that's a potentially dangerous situation. Elwood kills time and fights boredom by running a lucrative black market. He sells everything from Mop ‘N' Glo to weapons, and then he'll cook heroin for the base's head of Military Police in his spare time. Elwood has the place wired and his kind but inept commander (Ed Harris) never suspects anything.

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