Saw Sleeping Dogs, a New Zealand war film. It opens with the prime minister announcing that protests and demonstrations are illegal due to the increased tensions over oil scarcity and that elections will be temporarily suspended. The fascists have taken over and the guerillas start organizing. Our beardy protagonist attempts to escape all the conflict by relocating to a remote coastal island. Despite his attempts to not be involved, he is inexorably pulled in. First scooped up by the fascists and later bullied by the guerillas, he clings to a freedom and an independence. This film, of course, is from the 70s when every other film, it seems, was exploring exactly what freedom meant and what its price was.
As such, it has the 70s super-sincerity and messiness. The messiness is incredibly refreshing. The fascists are not grim death machines in tanks, but squashy middle-aged men in canvas uniforms who stuff our hero into a cheap Honda. There's a later sequence where the soldiers are stationed in a motel. It feels messy and genuine. The prosaic details add realism to the depiction of a fascist coup. This is a war film where the greatest danger comes not from enemy troupes, but from forgetting the password when rifles are shoved in your face.
It also has a good deal of the old sex and violence which was also kind of endemic in the 70s. This is a war film, after all. Its preoccupation is with the nobility and independence of the protagonist but this independence is displayed by which side of the fight he points his gun at and by which woman he screws. There's great, well-observed moments and the film is very non-glamourous for a war film, but don't go into this thing expecting antiseptic symbolism.
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