Meaningless, Annoying Characters

Rating: Null/10 (20 March 2004)

I don't know what it is that I missed about this "epic" film, but from the 15 minute mark on I was weighing whether to press stop or not. Christian Bale did an excellent job, no doubt: an excellent job at being extremely annoying. The first half of the movie he is running around speaking nonsense like a mongoloid, and then he switches to being like an old senile man.
I admit, maybe there is some symbolism I should have picked up that I didn't, but the story had no form. I kept wishing that people would just stop helping this kid so that he'd get out of the story. John Malkovich did a good job (ie., I liked his character), but I had no idea who he was or why he did the things he did. It was the same with every other character: who were they? No one knows. Why were they going here? Saying this? Doing that? Total mystery. At one point, a japanese officer of some sort comes in to the dorm and beats a main character severely. But we have no idea why because they speak in japanese (I can't understand it, maybe you can). The only reason I can think of is that he stole japanese soap.
Other things that confused me: Some of Jim's (Jaime's) lines seem totally strange: like he's a mental patient or something. It makes no sense. One second he's a helpless child and the next he's some philosopher? And the crawling through the weeds being pursued by a Jap soldier? Why?
All in all, I just never understood what the movie was about. I appreciated the music (though boys choirs don't do it for me like they do for Mr. Jackson) and I liked the sunset scenes (with the pilots preparing to leave for kamakazi missions), but I never truly began to care about any of the characters, except maybe the japanese boy who is like Jim's counterpart on the other side - though I still don't know what his significance was.
I'd advise to skip this movie, unless you feel like mocking the annoying kid with some friends (over some alcohol of some sort, you'll need it). But it's not even one of those "I'm gonna see this just because this guy hated it so much." Just annoying.