“Combat Shock” has clearly been influenced by “Taxi Driver,” but there is no mournful Bernard Herrmann score to romanticize Frankie’s quest and no sensuous slow-motion shots of the city’s mean streets to aestheticize his degraded environment. As one commenter observes in the accompanying making-of documentary, “this film smells” — but not in a metaphorical sense. The entire world of “Combat Shock” seems to have aged beyond its sell-by date, an olfactory metaphor that Mr. Giovinazzo drives home with an unforgettable image involving a carton of spoiled milk.

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