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bowieee
06-24-2003, 04:21 PM
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The Killing Fields

The world can be a fucked up place. Sometimes I tend to forget that as I sit at home in my favorite recliner watching dead alive while chowing down on a carne asada burrito. Then Every once in awhile I pop on a movie and it reminds me exactly how lucky most of us are. The Killing Fields is such a movie. The Killing fields explores the real life story of a friendship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and Dith Pran his assistant over in Cambodia. This is the plot. The backdrop is the genocide that occured in Cambodia at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

I don't want to tell too much of the story for fear of spoilers but the events that are recreated here show how cruel people can be and how many others learn to endure. Not only does it show like a back hand to the face the horrifying tragedies that took place in cambodia but it is a decent character portrat as well of the two main characters.

The acting here is top of the line from both Sam Waterson and Haing S. Ngor who won an Academy award for his performance. Haing had never acted before this movie and had suffered through "The Killing fields" and decided to take the role to show what was going on in his homeland. John Malkovich eats up the scenes as well like always as a fellow reporter with Julian Sands popping up here and there throughout the movie as well as avant garde performance Artist Spalding Grey.

Overall this is one of those movies that ingrains itself in the viewers mind and makes itself hard to forget. This takes an extremely dark slice of humanities modern history and shows it for all the world to see. I for one am better for it.

10/10

wyodebbie
03-20-2005, 01:23 PM
The main problem, for me, of "The Killing Fields" is that the film mainly focuses on the horror and killings in Cambodia, instead of the relationship between Schanberg and Pran. You only get a glimpse of the working relationship and not a thing about their personal relationship, or if they had one. Dr. Haing S. Ngor, as Dith Pran, gave the stand-out acting performance and Pran should of been nominated in best actor category, (and taken out Sam Waterson) instead of supporting, because at the half-way point he carries the entire film himself, and what a heart-wrenching performance it was as endured unspeakable cruelty held captive by the Communists. A definite plus of the film is the outstanding cinematography by Chris Menges capturing the beauty of the Cambodian landscape against all the death all around. That scene where Pran steps into the rice fields and you see all those rotting corpses for miles and miles will forever be branded on my mind. This film very hard to watch as very, very realistically shows the horrors and how senseless war is. Grade: 7/10 B

Briare Rabbit
03-21-2005, 09:28 AM
The Killing Fields feels like liberal minded bullshit, to put it bluntly. It really does nothing except show how "futile war is" but it's a mere observation, and fails to go very deep into anything. Ngor and Waterston give fine performances, and some of the movie is gripping and rather harrowing, but for the most part, it's rather lame- feels like cheap propoganda at the hands of the government than a serious exploration of the Cambodian killing fields.

5/10