***Some spoilers***
This is a flick from Down Under concerning an Aussie soldier who has gone missing in Cambodia during the beginnings of the civil breakdown, and his sister's search for him which impinges on a number of other sub-plots, mainly based around corruption and backstabbing, the factions in the Cambodian rebels, Whites Vs Natives, a love thang and a dead baby.
It's not a particularly good film, plodding, revealing levels of co-operation between Jaques Perrin and the local rebels, but it just simply fails to grab any attention as it comes from the drama-by-numbers school of film making ("I bet that happens next. Oh look, it did!").
The acting in the main is fairly staid and wooden. Sigrid Thornton is the missing soldier's sister whose method of acting for the role involves a single fixed, stern-looking pout, with her lips getting evermore tighter and thinner the longer the film progresses. She also wears a number of remarkably flimsy see-through blouses...!
The films agenda takes itself very seriously and further a 'deep' moral message about the colonial involvement in the territory. Worthy, but let down by the lack of either grit, majesty or atmosphere within the picture to bring the point across. An example of the seriousness of the writing is when the 'Educated' rebel leader breaks a raw egg in his hand. The egg white runs down the side of his hand but the yolk stays in his palm, and he intellectually observes this as a timely metaphor for Cambodia's future: `The white will go, but the yellow will stay.' Unintentionally hilarious as a concerted look of utter seriousness crosses his face. Perhaps in Apocolypse Now this sort of philosophising might have been quite pertinent, but in this lightweight it sounds like someone's having a joke.
A top performance (if I remember the character name correctly) of Bee Chan as Be, the terrifying and convincingly nutty radical rebel who hates all whites, whose final act is to topple the Educated Rebel. Her plastic bag-over-the-head routine was a highlight of the film.
All in all though, one of those films that I would like to be good but it just doesn't happen. It's just too formulaic, a drama-by-numbers that has been done a hundred times before.
4/10
This is a flick from Down Under concerning an Aussie soldier who has gone missing in Cambodia during the beginnings of the civil breakdown, and his sister's search for him which impinges on a number of other sub-plots, mainly based around corruption and backstabbing, the factions in the Cambodian rebels, Whites Vs Natives, a love thang and a dead baby.
It's not a particularly good film, plodding, revealing levels of co-operation between Jaques Perrin and the local rebels, but it just simply fails to grab any attention as it comes from the drama-by-numbers school of film making ("I bet that happens next. Oh look, it did!").
The acting in the main is fairly staid and wooden. Sigrid Thornton is the missing soldier's sister whose method of acting for the role involves a single fixed, stern-looking pout, with her lips getting evermore tighter and thinner the longer the film progresses. She also wears a number of remarkably flimsy see-through blouses...!
The films agenda takes itself very seriously and further a 'deep' moral message about the colonial involvement in the territory. Worthy, but let down by the lack of either grit, majesty or atmosphere within the picture to bring the point across. An example of the seriousness of the writing is when the 'Educated' rebel leader breaks a raw egg in his hand. The egg white runs down the side of his hand but the yolk stays in his palm, and he intellectually observes this as a timely metaphor for Cambodia's future: `The white will go, but the yellow will stay.' Unintentionally hilarious as a concerted look of utter seriousness crosses his face. Perhaps in Apocolypse Now this sort of philosophising might have been quite pertinent, but in this lightweight it sounds like someone's having a joke.
A top performance (if I remember the character name correctly) of Bee Chan as Be, the terrifying and convincingly nutty radical rebel who hates all whites, whose final act is to topple the Educated Rebel. Her plastic bag-over-the-head routine was a highlight of the film.
All in all though, one of those films that I would like to be good but it just doesn't happen. It's just too formulaic, a drama-by-numbers that has been done a hundred times before.
4/10
