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(More customer reviews)TRIBES belongs to a little-known sub-genre of 'The young man goes off to war' movie, best exemplified by Jack Webb in THE DI. Unlike THE DI, which has stood the test of time as the prototype of all such movies, TRIBES now is seen as a curious period piece in which a hippie is drafted into the US Marines and finds himself squarely opposed by the short-haired establishment symbolized by a marine drill instructor, superbly played by Darren McGavin. Jan-Michael Vincent plays Adrian, the hippie. Much of this movie plays like a rerun of THE DI. There is the hard-as-nails DI breaking down the recruits only to rebuild them into the sanctioned image of gung-ho marines. Early in the film, the DI soon realizes that Adrian is a square peg who has been ordered to fit into a round hole. Adrian shows up at boot camp wearing long hair and sandals, causing a predictably angry response from the DI. At this point the movie becomes a test of culture-vs-culture, with each side refusing to blink. Adrian is seen as some sort of mythic superman who is able to draw from his inner chi the strength and stamina to outperform all his fellow recruits. The battle from the DI's point of view is external: the drill field, the shooting range, the obstacle course. From Adrian's perspective, it is internal. Whenever he is called upon to perform heroic feats of exercise, the scene shifts from Adrian's 'now' to Adrian's 'then.' This 'then' is punctuated by hippie music and a pretty girl with flowers in her hair. The DI does not know how Adrian manages to excel but he is pretty sure that he is up against a force of internalized nature that soon threatens to spread to the other recruits who see Adrian's daily exploits and beg him to reveal his Mahesh Yogi secrets. Adrian explains in pseudo-hippie jargon of the late 1960's that "Man, you have to move yourself from the present world of hurt to a past world of good."
It is not difficult to see that in any confrontation between DI and recruit, any victory by the recruit can only be temporary. Surprisingly enough, Adrian's DI blinks first. He passes Adrian only to learn that the senior DI, who sees the hippie philosophy of Adrian as a menace greater than the communist dialectic of Marx and Engels, has failed Adrian on a technicality and orders him recycled to repeat the entire twelve week course of basic training. Adrian goes AWOL, thereby affirming the power of the state over the individual. Yet, the victory of the state may be as hollow and as ephemeral as was the early victory of the recruit over the system. As a new group of recruits enters the very grounds where Adrian trained just recently, the DI stands ready to receive them, but this time he carries with him a flower of Adrian to remind him that though tribes may differ dramatically if only externally, there is some core resemblance that connects hippie to DI and the state to the individual. Perhaps it is this knowledge that we are more alike than commonly perceived which makes this movie eminently watchable--even if Jack Webb would not understand.
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