Buffalo Soldiers (2001)
Trivia
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Spoilers (2)
Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9, 2001. The events that happened on 9-11 effectively killed the film's chances of distribution within the United States.
During the scene in which a tank plows through a German town, a stuntwoman was given directions to move out of the way of the tank as it was coming towards her. She failed to do so, and had to be pulled out of the road at the last minute (the footage of the incident was included in the final cut). Co-writer and director Gregor Jordan described the moment as terrifying, as he was convinced that she had actually been run over and killed.
Ed Harris was initially sent a copy of the script with the idea that he would play Sergeant Lee, but he found himself more drawn to the role of Colonel Berman, and was subsequently cast as such.
The forest where the tank drives through was planted just for this movie on a green field in front of a real forest. The tanks were not allowed to drive through the real forest.
Colonel Berman talks about one of his ancestors being the Civil War General John Bell Hood, "affectionately known as the Iron Boar". While Hood did exist, the nickname of "The Iron Boar" was apparently made up by the screenwriters. In the novel it was Francis "the Swamp Fox" Marion, but Gregor Jordan found out from Heath Ledger that the main character of The Patriot (2000) (which was being made at the time) was based on Marion. Jordan thought that if The Patriot became as successful as Braveheart (1995) that suddenly everyone would know about Marion and it would spoil the joke, that Berman's military ancestor is not very well known. So Jordan researched other American Generals, and used Hood instead.
At a screening of the film on January 21, 2003 at the Sundance Film Festival, a woman in the audience verbally attacked the film during a Q&A period following the presentation. The woman reportedly accused the filmmakers of being anti-American and flung a plastic water bottle. The bottle hit an elderly man in the crowd on the head. The woman claimed the bottle was intended to hit the screen. The man was not seriously injured.
First Sergeant Lee is wearing the shoulder patch of the 173rd Airborne Regiment on the right shoulder indicating combat in Vietnam. He also has Airborne and Ranger tabs. He and the other soldiers wear a unit patch for the 317th Supply Battalion that resembles the 32nd Infantry Division patch, and may have been created for the film. The actual patch for the 317th has four lightning flashes in a water container.
The Siegelsbach nuclear missile facility is actually a closed U.S. military depot that used to store nuclear weapons (as well as other munitions) although it wasn't actually a launch facility (in the film it's referred to as a nuclear facility or a nuclear base).
The scene in the parking lot where Elwood is tasking Knoll with getting the food for the big cookout, was filmed in the parking lot of the U.S. Army Karlsruhe Shopping Center, part of Smiley Barracks and Paul Revere Village housing complex, which had been recently turned back over to the Germans at the time of filming. Directly behind them can be seen the base theater "Minute Man Theater", and while the shot pans around to reveal them entering a building marked "Commissary", this had actually been the base Post Exchange at the time, with the Commissary located in a more confined area.
Spoilers
The scene where the gas station explodes seems to be shot from out of the woods. In reality, there were just two fir treetops mounted on two tritops because there was no forest at all.
The film is a British co-production, and British actors Tom Ellis and Idris Elba have very small parts as U.S. soldiers. (Ellis is one of Elwood's gang, who doesn't know if they're in West or East Berlin, and Elba leads the squad who raid the drugs lab.)
