Digger

While walking through the streets of Elk River, Ill., Vietnam vet John Fortunato happens to photograph a shooting and flees the scene by descending into a secret tunnel. In this fast-moving thriller, Flynn (The Concrete Inquisition) ingeniously grafts a Vietnam combat motif onto a small-town union war. In a bizarre tribute to the harrowing experience of fighting the Vietcong in their famous tunnel strongholds, Fortunato and two other vets, upon their return home, have dug a whole system of tunnels beneath Elk River. A company town in the grip of a union strike, Elk River rapidly becomes a war zone. When Fortunato's cousin Tommy Boyle, local head of the union, is killed, suspicion falls variously on company owner Anthony Hunt, his hired thug, a police deputy and the national head of the union. Fortunato becomes Hunt's next target, along with beautiful union lawyer Jill Baxter. Unfortunately, as things spin out of control in Elk River, Flynn litters his plot with a growing pile of bodies and events. Fortunato's paranormal gifts--he can see in the dark, sense danger and is visited by those he loves at the moment of their deaths--are a ludicrous distraction. Not content with a climactic replay of the Vietnam war among Fortunato, his allies and an ex-Vietcong tunnel fighter imported by Hunt, Flynn throws in a flood as well. By then, however, not even that deluge can wash away the disappointing taste left by this once-promising thriller. (Aug.)