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Plot: An American citizen is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody "Year Zero" ethnic cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:August 23, 2008The part which focussed on the 'killing fields' was great - but the first half of the film was almost pointless.
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MCT:July 28, 2008As a history teacher, this film was a real inspiration to me to study contemporary social history. How local populations are affected by war is a powerful message here.
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MCT:July 19, 2008
Two passionate and courageous journalists of different nationalities become witnesses of the horrors of war in southeast asia, one of them is a native who will have to hang on to his life while the nightmare remains.
Haing S. Ngor portrays the victim Dith Pran, with such candidness and affability that is hard not to shed a tear while you see all he had to go through, and all the sacrifices he made, for love and friendship. Remarkable, startling, but more important, incredibly uplifting. -
MCT:June 27, 2008It takes a lot for a movie of this genre to impress me, and although right now I can't think of an example of one that has managed, I know it can be done. 'The Killing Fields' is, for me, an epic bore. The finale is actually surprisingly entertaining and bits and pieces are watchable thanks to the soundtrack and some serious violence and blood and stuff, but to be honest, I spent the entire movie wishing I were somewhere else...
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MCT:June 13, 2008
The direction by Roland Joffé along with the Oscar-winning cinematography by Chris Menges bring the story to vivid life. There are a few times when the music distracts but, thankfully, those instances are the exception rather than the rule. The ending sequence, featuring John Lennon's "Imagine", is particularly touching though now bitterly ironic given Haing S. Ngor's murder a dozen years after this film. This is a compelling story of hope in the face of tyranny.
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MCT:May 6, 2008
He was a reporter for the New York Times whose coverage of the Cambodian War would win him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. But the friend who made it possible was half the world away with his life in great danger... This is the story of war and friendship, the anguish of a country and of one man's will to live. Sydney Schanberg is a New York Times journalist convering the civil war in Cambodia. Together with local representative Dith Pran, they cover some of the tragedy and madness of the war. When the Americans forces leave, Dith Pran sends his family with them, but stays behind himself to help Schanberg cover the event. As an American, Schanberg won't have any trouble leaving the country, but the situation is different for Pran; he's a local, and the Khmer Rouge are moving in.
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MCT:April 25, 2008
One of my all time favourites, this is a movie that has not only influenced a lot of people to take an interest in Cambodia, but has been used in parts of the world as a teaching aid to illustrate the aftermath of civil war.
Although I've given it 5 stars here, it does have one fault that still grates on me (one that is quite well known now, I guess): The ever-controversial song at the end. I agree with the producer, David Puttnam, that the film needs something at the end to lift the audience from the weight of the events, and the song (which was #1 around the world at the time of Pran's escape) may have played well amongst preview audiences, but its message is wholly inappropriate. Leaving that aside, the film's understated manner gives one of the greatest visualisations of a dictatorial regime from our recent history. And, even though it's now more than 20 years since I saw this in a theatre, the film still reduces me to tears whenever I see it. Sam Waterson's portrayal of Schanberg is incredible, and the film gains merit for not flinching from showing him in quite a poor light. But how many of us would have emerged cleanly from that situation? That Schanberg was more concerned that the truth be told than that he was seen as a hero (which he certainly wasn't) is a credit to him, because I have to admit, I sympathise a lot with Al Rockoff who believes that a fair amount of responsibility rests on Schanberg's shoulders.
Many people now know that the person playing Dith Pran was a Cambodian refugee who also endured a similar experiences under the Khmer Rouge, and it must have been painful for him to revisit his experiences.
This is a moving story that never descends into hopelessness, and I'd love to see the original edit of this with the footage of the Vietnamese involvement and Schanberg's breakdown. Ah well, maybe sometime it'll happen. -
MCT:April 11, 2008
Shocking, eye opening and ultimately triumphant. not your safe family movie but everyone does need to have seen this once in their life
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MCT:April 1, 2008
Superb nonfiction-drama of the infamous genocide of the Cambodian people. One of the two main characters of this movie Dith Pran died recently, march 2008!
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MCT:March 31, 2008
I saw this first back in the 80s when it first came out. And with Dith Pran passing, I just had to see it again and hope you will too. The movie is worth remembering, and so is the message.
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MCT:March 28, 2008A great film that really shows the horrors that happened in Cambodia as it is the story of the real-life friendship between the reporter and his assistant
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MCT:March 24, 2008
Some movies just stick in your mind for years after your first viewing, having left an impression that doesn't fade, even after detailed memories of the storyline and even the characters or visual images start slipping away.
The most unforgettable and unshakeable movie, for me, was 'The Killing Fields'; perhaps the most harrowing and visceral films of the 1980s.
This is a memorable film because the story is powerful, compelling and horrific, the script intelligent, the cinematography beautiful and the performances nearly flawless. It's doubly memorable because the story is true and co-star Haing S. Ngor (Pran) - a medical doctor by training, not an actor - was a survivor of the real Killing Fields.
The horror of genocide is probably truly comprehensible only to the people who have survived it, but the images of Pran, literally up to his eyes in corpses, in his desperate bid to escape the killing fields is desperately affecting - and provides a palpable sense of real terror.
Your not meant to enjoy this movie, its a story meant to be experienced and felt. -
MCT:January 7, 2008
moving and often disturbing, this is a great film about loyalty, friendship, survival, and the madness and chaos of war. Ngor, who endured his own personal struggles with the Khmer Rouge, brilliantly portrays the unceasing Dith Pran. an overall sophisticated, blatant, powerful movie.
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MCT:December 31, 2007
Deeply politcal and emotional condemnation of war. All sides are equally implicated in the brutallity where the real losers are the ordinary people.
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MCT:December 27, 2007
I really wasn't interested in seeing this at first, but I was really mesmerized by this story and stayed on the edge of my chair till the end. It's just one of those movies that you get into and don't realize till later that your muscles were so tense all along. It was also a great little history lesson for me, as I had no clue about the Cambodian crisis that arose from the Vietnam War....
Excellent! -
MCT:December 1, 2007
What is scarier than a 14 year old gang member with a gun? Seven year olds given supreme authority as "truth-seers" authorized, if not ordered, by the government to kill non-cooperative citizens.
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MCT:November 27, 2007
This is a real life story. And it is a very sad story for the most part. But we cannot hide from life all of the time and this one needs to be seen
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MCT:November 26, 2007
In my opinion this movie is the truiest account on war period no hollywood glamour here raw emotion.
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MCT:November 13, 2007
Want to be a war correspondent in the future? Then see this one for a bit of orientation experience.
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MCT:October 29, 2007
I began pursuing a viewing of this film after I watched Roland Joffé's later effort The Mission with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. I didn't intend for today to turn into a marathon of Warner Brothers war films about imprisonment with John Malkovich as supporting actor, but that's what happened, because I decided on using the hideous Warner snapper cases as my method of determination for what to watch today. It will change with my next film, but it was a curious pattern all the same. Malkovich, though, as the name I saw in the cast credits that drew me closer to the film, as native Cambodian Haing S. Ngor--though winner of Best Supporting Actor for this role--was an unknown quantity, and Sam Waterston I continue to identify most strongly with Law and Order, unfairly relegating him to that lower gate of "television leading man," usually meaning a sort of rubber ceiling on dramatic acting ability--it's passable, even believable, but not impressive.
Sam Waterston here, though, is not a prosecutor but real journalist Sydney Schanberg, accompanied by photojournalist Al Rockoff (Malkovich) and guided by Cambodian native Dith Pran. The film begins in 1973, as the United States' involvement in Vietnam is beginning to spill over into Cambodia, though there are serious attempts to keep it secret. Schanberg and Pran sneak into the town of Neak Leung, which American forces bombed (allegedly by accident, I make no claims in support or against this, and while the film opens the door to this being a story, it does not come down hard as claiming such a thing) and attempt to document the occurrence, including the hundreds of dead and wounded civilians. The military, personified primarily by Major Reeves (Craig T. Nelson) brings in the press corps to show them a less bloody and violent version of the town so as to "sanitize" the story for the American public's consumption.
Schanberg, Pran and Rockoff are next seen two years later in 1975, with the Khmer Rouge invading the capital, seemingly peacefully. Schanberg finds this suspicious and has arranged for the evacuation of Pran and his family, sending them off with international diplomats to the U.S. Pran, however, chooses to stay behind and help his friend Sydney to cover the events occurring in Cambodia. They are all arrested by a detachment of the Khmer Rouge, witnessing multiple executions in their custody before Pran is able to negotiate their release, leaving them to seek refuge in the French Embassy under the advice of fellow journalist Jon Swain (Julian Sands). The embassy is ordered to turn over all Cambodian civilians, with an undercurrent of threat to the lives of said natives, leaving Rockoff and Schanberg to try desperately to cobble together a fake passport for Pran in what is possibly the most tense and dramatic scene of photo development ever put to, well, film.
Pran is found out, however, and spends much of the rest of the movie experiencing what is referenced in the title of the film--the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge regime, where anyone suspected of any ties, whatsoever, to the previous government is mercilessly executed and buried in shallow mass graves.
Certainly the subject matter here is important, and nothing can be said to suggest it is not, unless it is said by a heartless, full-blooded misanthrope or racist. Being neither, my only concern or question is why events like this one and leaders like Pol Pot go seemingly unacknowledged for their atrocities when the name Hitler is reeled out as the consistent hyperbolic example of pure evil in humanity. I don't mean to say that the acts of the Nazi government in Germany were not horrific or were "lesser," but rather, why do we seem to feel these other events are beneath mention or remembrance--at least in comparison? There are genocides everywhere, constantly, and some of them truly horrific, yet, at least the American society I live in, seems to feel that there are only a few acts worth mentioning, and only the Germans suffer the stigma of their past, where the other countries seem not to. This puzzles me as it always has; Native Americans are barely mentioned, as are Japanese internment camps, both those made by the Japanese (as I just saw in Empire of the Sun) and the ones FOR the Japanese(-Americans) stateside--Stalin, Pol Polt, Idi Amin, so on and so forth, yet in this country it seems that only slavery and the Holocaust are to be so fully remembered. They should be remembered, without a doubt, but so should these other events. But, I digress--as always.
Joffé's element seems to be the exploitation, enslavement and murder of indigenous peoples if these two excellent films are to be considered examples of his work, and I would certainly suggest these choices if I were him. Waterston burns with a fire and passion I didn't know he had in this film, torn to pieces by his anger at the coverups and atrocities that surround him, as well as the guilt he feels at his inability to save his dear friend Pran. Ngor more than deserved his Oscar for his performance as Pran, pulling in our sympathies easily, conveying thoughts and feelings through a language that is not his native one, and showing subtleties even experienced actors don't always seem to exhibit--and this was his first role! Malkovich takes on a more moral role, and a less commanding one than in Empire of the Sun and shows the strengths of his craft as always.
An excellent film, and a good, strong contender in a year of good, strong films. But then, perhaps I just like to think 1984 was a year of exceptional quality. -
MCT:September 18, 2007I can not stress the amount of disappointment I have in this movie. It is one-sided, and completely vague in it's supposed telling of the holocaust imposed by Pol Pot. The only point of view of we see is that of Schanberg, not Pran.
It's pretty to look at and that's about it. -
MCT:September 10, 2007
The best film to depict the emotional side of the Vietnam war. The ending of the film blows me away.
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MCT:September 8, 2007
Ngor was right. This film will last for hundreds of years, at least, in my opinion too. The only film that can make me cry every time I watch it. This is reality
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Comments
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nazmondoposted 307 days ago
