In November of 1963, four Marine buddies, just out of boot camp, spend their two-day pass and $50 a head setting up a dog fight-- everyone brings the ugliest girl he can find to a party, and the one who is ugliest wins her date the pot. River Phoenix brings Lili Taylor (she gained 12 pounds for the role and wears padding). Somehow they actually connect.

It's a moment in history where the times they were a-changing, and no one quite knows what is happening, nor what is going to happen. Large swaths are filmed on the streets and interiors of San Francisco at night, showing bits and pieces that still survived when the film was shot, adding to the air of a tired and sick society about to undergo massive changes, while two individual fumble their ways into little truths in the face of broad assertions. It's a charming movie that pays careful attention to details of dress and the fragmenting mores of the day.

Nancy Savoca's "Dogfight" looks at two back-to-back eras through the lens of a cruel game played by some marines in San Francisco right before they get shipped out. Their game is to bring dates to a party, and whoever brings the ugliest wins. But as it so happens, one of them (River Phoenix) hooks up with a politically-minded young woman (Lili Taylor),and she won't let him remain a crude-mannered jerk. Shipping out to Vietnam the day of the Kennedy assassination, he returns in 1966 to a society completely different from the one that he left. But the question remains of whether the young woman will hook up with him again.

Seeing Phoenix's performance here makes it all the sadder that he died so young, thinking what his career could've been had he survived; at least his younger brother got to have a versatile career (including an Oscar-winning turn in "Joker"). Without a doubt, Taylor's performance here helped set her up as one of the queens of '90s arthouse cinema. The characters offer a look at what was, in a society about to undergo massive changes. I was born long after the '60s, so I can only know the era through stories, cinema, etc. Even so, "Dogfight" is a true masterpiece. Everyone should see it.

The most atypical River Phoenix role, the furthest from his own personality comes in this film. In Dogfight River plays a young Marine recruit who along with buddies Richard Panebianco, Anthony Clark, and Mitchell Whitfield who are on a last night's leave and are heading from their Treasure Island base for a night of fun and frolic in the San Francisco of November, 1963.

The guys are about to participate in a really mindless and sick ritual called a Dogfight. The guys seek out the ugliest woman they can find and bring her to a designated bar where they're judged. The 'winner' gets a prize of whatever monies the Marines have collected among themselves. Talk about objectifying the female body in a negative way.

Phoenix hooks up with sweet and shy Lilly Taylor who really moved me with her performance. She and her mother run a coffee shop and she's a quiet kid into folk music, her favorite being Joan Baez.

While the other three have the usual night on the town for the Armed Services, Phoenix and Taylor find they connect in ways that they never dreamed possible. As they get to know each other the audience sees a more typical River Phoenix.

I remember seeing this when it first came out. It had a limited release and was restricted to art houses. The theater I saw it in was memorable too, it was the only one I've ever been in without a concession stand, not even concession machines. I guess in this no frills theater I was lucky they had rest rooms.

Phoenix and Taylor make a very lovely couple. It's a good picture for River, but Taylor was the one who really blew me away.