Dogfight (1991)

USA, 94 minutes
Director: Nancy Savoca
Writer: Bob Comfort
Photography: Bobby Bukowski
Music: Mason Daring
Editor: John Tintori
Cast: Lili Taylor, River Phoenix, Richard Panebianco, Anthony Clark, Mitchell Whitfield, Holly Near, Elizabeth Daily, Sue Morales, Christina Mastin, Brendan Fraser

Dogfight is a small-scale romantic drama composed of many familiar elements and with a lot of courage and heart. Arguably it panders to baby boomer types such as myself already prone to lionize even the most insignificant parts of their lives with embarrassing sentimentality. When I finally noticed how much like Before Sunrise it is, the effect was to make me like Before Sunrise more—and to wonder how familiar Richard Linklater was with Dogfight and director Nancy Savoca's work generally when he made it, because the connections are there.

I have some sense now that Dogfight has faded into obscurity, which surprises me if only because of the River Phoenix performance. I see it discussed on the movie blogs I frequent only on rare occasions. It's missing entirely from my Halliwell's (the 2008 edition, which admittedly is a weird book). It made it to a DVD release in 2003, but that's now out of print (and commanding prices north of $100 for a new copy); yet there are no fewer than 80 customer reviews on its Amazon page. It occurs to me that what all this adds up to is Dogfight has become a cult picture and I am a member of the cult. So be it—here's hoping I can convince you to become a member too. Probably spoilers on the other side of the jump.

Dogfight (1991)

#31: Dogfight (Nancy Savoca, 1991)

Dogfight is a determinedly small movie, a romantic comedy, and a baby-boomer parable of the '60s rich with period detail. Set mostly in the late fall of 1963, Lili Taylor plays a young wannabe folk singer living at home in San Francisco with her mother above a diner, which they run. River Phoenix is a Marine passing through town on his way to Vietnam. Already that puts a lot of cliché-balls in the air, but the "dogfight" premise enables the picture to successfully stave off Big Chill-style baggage for the most part.

The dogfight is a game the Marines play on their R&R stopovers. They allow themselves a certain amount of time to split up and wander the city, each one picking up the ugliest girl he can find. Then they rendezvous back at a bar with the girls and carry on the competition among themselves. The ugliest girl wins the prize for the Marine who brought her. Mostly this is all hidden from the girls, but the Marines don't particularly care if the game is exposed either.