Imagine an army base where Sergeant Bilko runs a smack-for-guns racket instead of illegal card schools, spaced-out tank drivers go joyriding and boredom is the enemy.

You get some idea of Australian director Gregor Jordan's take on US military might when we see a platoon of grunts marching over the stars and stripes.

And trampling over US sensibilities has already caused this film a lot of bother, release being delayed a number of times.

Official kingpin of the misfits and time-servers who make up the Stuttgart-based 317th Supply Division is officially the inept Commander Wallace Berman (Harris).

But everybody knows that his clerk, Specialist Ray Elwood (Phoenix), calls the shots, sleeping with Wallace's wife and selling stolen stolen Mop 'n' Glo to the locals.

A black marketeer par excellence, he also cooks up heroin for the ruthless head of Military Police and runs a top-of-the range Mercedes saloon with the proceeds.

However, just when he's brokered a deal to sell stolen rocket launchers to a Turkish gangster in exchange for a huge drugs shipment, things go wrong.

The arrival of Sgt Lee (Glenn), a by-the-rules Vietnam vet, threatens to put a spanner in this works...and to make matters worse, Elwood's fallen for Lee's daughter.

This sublimely assured amoral fable follows in the grand tradition of Catch 22, carefully weaving together tragedy and comedy to make an explosively controversial mix.

There are some mindblowing setpieces - the scene where a stoned crew take their Leopard tank through a German market and take out a petrol station is perfectly realised.

The casting - particularly Harris as the kindly but incompetent base commander and Glenn as Elwood's brutal nemesis - is pretty much spot-on.

However, it's Phoenix who displays how good an actor he really is, managing to somehow lend a self-centred opportunist charm and a degree of decency.

The movie had the misfortune to get its premiere 48 hours before September 11, and its anti-American stance was deemed unsuitable for release at the time.

Still unseen in America, now couldn't be a better time to enjoy its uncompromising stance and pitch black humour. You probably won't see a better film this year.

Tim Evans