An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.
- Awards
- 9 wins & 12 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaTilda Swinton had just given birth to twins before starring in this film, which was helpful for the film, where the display of the bodies play an important role, and her character had also just given birth.
- Quotes
Tom: I saw you.
Jessie: Saw me what?
Tom: In the bath...
Jessie: Yeah?
Tom: What were you doing?
Jessie: What do you think? I got in and he got out.
Tom: That's not what I saw.
Jessie: Well, that's all it was.
Tom: Where were you?
Jessie: It's a pretty weird thing you're suggesting if you're saying what I think you're saying. I haven't told you to f@ck off or anything, which I probably should've. Nothing happened, OK? I'd tell you.
Tom: You couldn't.
Jessie: Yes, I could. You OK now?
- Alternate versionsThe R-rated US version has four minutes of footage, mostly involving incestuous acts, removed.
"War Zone" is a cross between "Once Were Warriors," the visceral NZ movie on domestic violence, and "Wuthering Heights."
It's visually stunning, painterly, as the dysfunctional family is set in almost Edward Hopper-still life isolation on the moors, surrounded only by the elements--lots of rain, sea and relentless wind--with the characters mostly silent you sure hear that howling wind instead of conversation-- with an occasional human being staring them down.
While the family's close-knit physical intimacy was realized in an almost 17th century way of togetherness, I'm not sure the abuse was, as I thought most incest more pedophiliac than this. So the universality of any message is lost, other than the lesson that family members are love-tropic and take it any way they can get it with some fine lines dividing functional from dysfunctional.
If Bergman did an abuse movie, it might look like this. Excellent acting all around, though as usual some working-class Brit accents can be hard to decipher by an American. (originally written 12/31/1999)
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Tim Roth's The War Zone
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $254,441
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $18,335
- Dec 12, 1999
- Gross worldwide
- $254,441
- Runtime1 hour 38 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1