Lightdeossk
Captivating movie !
Lela
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Uriah43
This movie begins in Saigon right before the Tet Offensive with a young prostitute lying naked on a bed when suddenly the man she just slept with pulls out a gun and shoots her in the head. As it turns out that the only evidence found at the scene points to an American army officer which in turn results in two C.I.D. agents named "Buck McGriff" (Willem Dafoe) and "Albaby Perkins" (Gregory Hines) being sent to investigate. Unfortunately, they soon realize that the person behind these killings is very well connected and anybody who gets too close gets eliminated before they can disclose anything. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie started off real well and I especially liked the depiction of the Saigon night life during this particular time. However, the film got more than a little far-fetched about two-thirds of the way in which caused it to lose a great deal of credibility from there on out. Although I still don't consider this film to be bad necessarily, it could have been much better without some of the ridiculous scenarios towards the end and with that in mind I have rated this movie accordingly. Average.
Woodyanders
Tough Sgt. Buck McGriff (the always excellent Willem Dafoe) and his equally hard-nosed partner Sgt. Albaby Perkins (a sound and convincing performance by Gregory Hines) find themselves in tremendous jeopardy as they investigate a series of vicious Vietnamese prostitute murders in 1968 Saigon. Director Christopher Crowe, who also co-wrote the coarse and engrossing script with Jack Tibeau, relates the gripping story at a steady pace, creates and maintains an uncompromisingly harsh and gritty tone, builds a good deal of tension, and stages the rousing action set pieces with real crackling aplomb. The strong chemistry between Dafoe and Hines really keeps the picture humming; they receive sturdy support from Amanda Pays as streetwise nun Nicole, Fred Ward as their easygoing superior Dix, Scott Glenn as the fearsome and unhinged Colonel Dexter Armstrong, Keith David as surly uncooperative witness Maurice, David Alan Grier as the helpful Rogers, Kay Tong Lim as meddlesome Vietnamese cop Lime Green, and Raymond O'Connor as the paranoid Elgin Flowers. The seedy exotic location, unsparingly profane dialogue, sordid subject matter, startling outbursts of raw brutal violence, and a sizable smattering of nudity give this movie an extra tart'n'tangy kick. David Gribble's glittery cinematography and James Newton Howard's pulsating score are both up to par. A most worthwhile film.
sol
**SPOILERS** There's this Jack the Ripper-like killer loose on the streets of wartime Siagon who specializes in killing, after having sex with them, Vietnamese hookers who for some reason known only to himself have Eurasian children. What makes all this even more disturbing is that the killer is later identified by an US Army insignia he left at one of the murder scenes as being a high ranking, a full colonel, member of the US Military stationed in the city!Put on the case is US Army investigators Sargent's Buck McGriff, Willem Dafor, and Apbaby Perkins, Gregory Hines, who's job is to apprehend the killer before the entire Vietnamese population of the city turn against the occupying US Army and join the Viet Cong in retaliation to what this American psycho is doing! This with the US Army & Marines in a life and death struggle with the Viet Cong and RNV, North Vietnamese Army, at the start of the full-scale 1968 Tet Offensive!McGriff & Perkins do uncover a number of clues to who this murderer is but when they fallow them up they hit a brick wall in that no one, American & Vietnamese, is willing to point him out in fear of their lives. The only person they get any cooperation from is a French Nun Sister Nicole, Amanda Pays, who knew some of the victims whom her church looked after and cared for. Both McGriff and Perkins track down the #1 suspect in the hooker murders at Fire Base Conrad south of Saigon a Col. Dexter Armstrong, Scott Glenn.***SPOILERS*** In the few minutes that we, as well as Sargent's McGriff & Perkins, have in observing this "Golden Boy" of the US Army, the youngest full colonel in the US Military, you suddenly realize why we lost the war in Vietnam! Col. Armstrong who's loved and worshiped like a God by the men whom he commands comes across as a dangerously unstable grade triple A nut-case! Not only to those poor Vet Cong prisoners that he interrogates but to himself as well! It soon and tragically becomes obvious to McGriff & Perkins that Col. Armstrong isn't the man that their looking for in him eliminating himself as a suspect in a most spectacular fashion! It's then that the truth comes out, due to the process of elimination, to who this GI serial killer really is!**MAJOR SPOILER**Someone who got screwed in the past out of a field commission because it came out later that he's not qualified to be an "Offier and a Gentelman". In that he knocked up an Asian woman who ended up giving birth out of wedlock to his and her Eurasian baby!Lack luster at best crime thriller with both it's stars looking totally out of place in it. Willem Dafoe as Sgt. McGriff looks more like a grown up milk drinking Opie Taylor of the Andy Griffith show then a tough talking and hard as nails US Army Sargent who can have you shaking in your socks just by him, with his cold snake-like eyes and sinister wolf-like grin, looking at you. Gregory Hines as Sgt. Perkins seem so bored and out of it that you have the feeling that he's gulped down an entire bottle of downers or just want's out of the film as early as possible even if he has to be killed off for that to happen.
alexisdetroit
Off limits became something of a quasi-cult film for me. I was in Vietnam with the Marines north and south of Danang in 1968 and once fantasized about hitching a ride down Highway 1 to see Saigon, no small feat as it is something like 580 road miles. But the highway was full of vehicles during the day and you could always catch a ride. I never did get Saigon during the war, but finally did with a group of war vets in 1994. One of my favorite quips in the movie is when Dafoe turns around and finds some South Viet QCs (MPs) coming toward him and says, "We've got mice." That's what we GIs called Viets wearing helmets with QC (Quan Canh) on them. I am now spending several months in Saigon on sort of a temporary assignment, i.e., staying with the in-laws of my Viet wife on a winter break. I would like to see Off Limits again just to critique the city backdrop it used and how realistic it was. I thought this movie could have become a TV mini series but realize it would have been more expensive than China Beach in coming up with SE Asian sets to shoot on. I give it a 7, perhaps too high of a rating, as it goes good on a rainy Saturday afternoon over drinks with friends, especially if they happen to be Vietnam vets.
