Film

The Odd Angry Shot

Name: The Odd Angry Shot
Genre: War, Action, Comedy
Released: 1979
Cast: Graham Kennedy, John Hargreaves, John Jarratt, Bryan Brown, Graeme Blundell

War action

A 1979 Australian war film following SAS soldiers in Vietnam, balancing brutal combat with the grinding tedium and dark humour of deployment. It's unglamorous and unflinching about trauma, yet oddly funny—soldiers cracking jokes in the face of horror. For anyone tired of war films that either glorify or lecture, this finds the messy human truth in between.

TMDb rating

3.1

If you liked this

Platoon1986

Oliver Stone's visceral Vietnam portrait captures the same mixture of random violence, moral confusion, and soldiers bonding under fire. It's the American counterpart to The Odd Angry Shot—same war, different army, equally unsparing.

But Stone's style is heavier-handed and more explicitly anti-war. If you prefer subtlety to sermon, this swings the other direction.

We Were Soldiers2002

Mel Gibson leads a cavalry unit into one of Vietnam's bloodiest early battles. It has the same respect for soldiers' professionalism and camaraderie, told with genuine tactical detail and emotional weight.

But It's more earnest and patriotic in tone. The Odd Angry Shot's sardonic edge is replaced with something straighter.

Apocalypse Now1979

Released the same year, it's also about the madness of Vietnam. Both films reject jingoism, but where Odd Angry Shot finds dark comedy in small-unit reality, Coppola goes operatic and hallucinogenic.

But It's a five-hour descent into surrealism. If you want boots-on-the-ground authenticity rather than fever dream, this abandons it.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Odd Angry Shot

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Murphy's War1971

Both use humour and camaraderie (or its absence) to explore how men survive and endure through means other than conventional heroism.

Peter O'Toole as a sole survivor of a U-boat sinking, waging one-man guerrilla war in a Venezuelan swamp. It's a war film told as obsessive revenge thriller, with the same dark humour and focus on improvisation under pressure.

But It's a revenge fantasy, not a collective experience, and it's visually slower and more meditative than action-packed. Some will find it too strange.

The Deer Hunter1978

Another ensemble about ordinary men thrown into Vietnam. It has the same gallows humour and bond between soldiers, and captures both the horror and the strange brotherhood that forms.

But The Russian roulette scenes are deeply disturbing. Some viewers find the politics muddled or the pacing glacial.

Come and See1985

A Soviet film about a boy conscripted into WWII. Like Odd Angry Shot, it refuses sentiment and shows war as corruption of innocence, with flashes of dark humour amid devastation.

But It's in Russian with subtitles, and far more bleak and graphic. The tone is unrelenting despair rather than gallows humour.

MAS*H1970

Altman's Korean War comedy-drama finds absurdist humour in military chaos and uses comedy as a survival mechanism. That tonal balance—funny because it's terrible—is pure Odd Angry Shot.

But It's a satire of the military itself, not a soldiers' story. The targets are different, even if the mood feels familiar.

Full Metal Jacket1987

Kubrick's Vietnam film splits into training and combat. The second half shares Odd Angry Shot's unsentimental look at soldiers doing a job in chaos, without the documentary feel.

But The first half is savage and comedic in a way that overshadows the war sections. Some find the film's attitude toward its characters troubling.

84 Charlie Mopic1989

Lesser-known Vietnam film about long-range reconnaissance patrols—exactly the kind of grinding, low-intensity operations Odd Angry Shot depicts. Authentic and unglamorous.

But It's genuinely obscure for good reason: smaller scale, less polished, and emotionally flatter than the films above.

Rogue Male1976

A taut British miniseries about a man hunted after a failed assassination attempt. It has the same lean professionalism and dark humour under pressure that The Odd Angry Shot carries into combat.

But It's a spy thriller, not a war film. The tone is espionage cool rather than soldier solidarity.

Wake in Fright1971

Both are Australian films that find dark comedy and unexpected tenderness in groups of rough men under extreme stress, refusing sentimentality.

A devastating Australian film about a man's descent in the outback among rough, working-class men. It shares The Odd Angry Shot's darkly comic portrayal of Australian masculine brutality and the bonds forged in harsh conditions.

But It's a psychological horror-thriller with almost no plot structure. The tone slides from dark comedy into genuine dread and degradation.

Johnny Got His Gun1971

Both refuse the narrative that soldiers' suffering means something or leads anywhere. They ask what happens to men after war strips the story away.

A young soldier, completely paralyzed and isolated in a hospital bed after WWI, can only think. It's war cinema's quietest, most brutal answer to combat films: survival without agency or meaning.

But It's agonizing and claustrophobic—a single man in darkness for most of the runtime. The anti-war message is direct and unbearable.