Cinema: Raking Up the Autumn Leavings

Seven films for fall, from Bond to Beyond

STREAMERS

David Rabe's war play Streamers takes place in a kind of boot camp on the border of national psychosis. Here boredom sinks into despair; high spirits become hysterics; the killer instinct can flare with switchblade speed. Set in 1965, Streamers was written soon after the 1975 fall of Sai gon, and Rabe's dialogue glows with the white heat of hindsight. His four young draftees are doomed from the start, either by their blithe ignorance of the horror to come or by their premonition of it....