Touching

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2016)

I'm not exactly sure why, but I really enjoyed this film for some reason. It starts off following the daily life of a boy named Agu. His village is a buffer zone protected by ECOMOG troops and his father helps any refugees that enter the area by letting them live on his large plot of land. They are then informed that the government has fallen and rebels begin wreaking havoc. Agu's father manages to buy a safe transport to the capital for his wife and youngest son, but Agu must stay behind with his older brother and father. When the government invades his village, they round up all of the residents thinking they are rebels and Agu's father tells him to run right as they are all shot. Agu runs into the forest and is taken under a rebel group's wing led by an unnamed commandant. As time progresses, Agu takes part in many murders, pillages, takes over many villages and vantage points. He becomes strong and respected, particularly by the commandant who then rapes him. His good friend Strika had the same thing happen to him. The commandant is then summoned to the rebel headquarters expecting a promotion but instead gets a demotion. He and his battalion escape to an abandoned gold mine to look for refuge and money for supplies as they have run out of bullets. The battalion begins to protest against the commandant and leave. They are captured by UN troops and the children taken to a rehab school where Agu is reborn into a new human being. The message this movie portrays is very powerful and it gives the viewer a very in depth look as to what it's like being a rebel. It very accurately shows what they do as well as how they do it. It shows them capturing UN convoys, taking over villages, and defending their territory. It also shows very well the psychological effect all of this has on the children that fight. At one point when they enter the house of a mother and a baby, Agu remembers his mother and latches onto the woman as he cries. The fellow soldiers remove him and begin to rape the woman. He then yells at the kid raping her to stop and kills the woman after the rapist refuses. Another touching moment was near the very end when Agu was at the rehab school talking to a counselor. She asks Agu to tell her what he did and he replies by saying he did many horrible things. He doesn't go into detail because he fears that he will be regarded by all as a "beast." Agu finally accepts himself and runs into the water at the beach and begins playing with all of the other boys. Overall, the movie was hard to watch at some points, but was very powerful and exposed one of the world's greatest problems.