Bullets rattle through sodden undergrowth and vengeful squads of brutalised soldiers descend like hell on unsuspecting villages.

Welcome to Tigerland. This isn't Vietnam, but for US Army recruits in the early Seventies, it was as close as some of them would get.

Godforsaken miles of rain-soaked forest swamp, Tigerland was the US Army's "war theme park" - the horribly realistic final training station for raw recruits en route to the war. And for much of this brave and beautiful film it's the unseen threat on the horizon as last days of innocence are played out against a backdrop of impending slaughter.

We've been here before. Full Metal Jacket looked at the psychological impact of combat training on small groups of men and Platoon extended that to the first experience of war in the jungles of Vietnam.

And we've seen these characters before. Bozz (Colin Farrell) is the platoon's conscience, kicking against the pricks as the Army squashes individuality and compassion underfoot. Paxton (Legally Blonde leading man Matthew Davis) is the idealistic romantic who enlists on the coat tails of Hemingway and James Jones. And trigger-happy Wilson (Shea Whigham) is the bubbling-under, twitchy psycho itching to burn his first bamboo hut.

So what's new? The film's hand held 16 millimetre footage is visually sparse but brings its own poetry. Shades of grey and green are shot against a bleached out background and unsparing close-ups reveal every sweaty pore.

The cast walk the emotional walk to back up Joel Schumacher's stylistic talk. In a complex web of relationships, the engine room performance comes from Irishman Colin Farrell as Bozz. Tough-talking but fatalistic, he throws defiance in the face of the machine taking him off to the war. It's a stand which polarises the platoon and opens an escape route from the war for some of his comrades. But once Tigerland gets its hooks into Bozz, his personal salvation drops off the agenda.

So war is cast as the villain and these men - even before they see the enemy - are the all too human heroes. Tigerland offers a glimpse of the awful, unstoppable reality of combat as anticipated by men caught in its deadly one-way embrace. Patriotism doesn't come into it.