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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Gay > Combat (2006/Patrick Carpenter)

Combat (2006/Patrick Carpenter)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Shorts/Extras: C+     Main Program: C+

 

 

Not to be confused with the ever-popular hit TV War series, Patrick Carpenter’s Combat (2006) is the conclusion of a trilogy of shorts in which the director examines time, space and gay sexuality without overkill.  This new DVD contains the entire trilogy, including God Is A Dog, The 9 Tuesdays (Les 9 mardis) and the title finale.  The first two run about a half-hour, the conclusion twice as long.

 

Though they are very different and the results are mixed, the pieces are ambitious at times.  Dog is a pastiche of Super 8 film of the director’s childhood with reflections that sometimes works.  Tuesdays tries to deal with time and space, but is far from effective in its meditations, being easily the weakest of the three parts.  Alain Resnais he ain’t.

 

That leaves Combat, which deals with two men in love who fight and are in conflict with each other (and possibly themselves) more than able to be at peace with each other.  This is the most intriguing of the three, has the most potential and just does not have enough time to delve into what it starts up.  Like its predecessors, it is too abstract too often to deal with the issues at hand, though it can be interesting at times.  That can be fascinating and is definitely a risk not enough gay projects take on, but that is still more ambitious than most we have seen lately, so Carpenter should get credit he deserves just for trying.

 

The 1.33 X 1 on each of the three parts vary throughout, but is decent though expect some degraded images from age, letterboxing in the dual screen section of Tuesdays and even detail limits of Combat.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is stereo at best, but fidelity can be mixed at times.  Besides the shorts, a 12-minutes interview with Carpenter is the only extra.  Wonder what he’ll do next?

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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