A raging bore

Rating: 2/10 (24 May 2006)

When I saw the previews for this movie almost two decades ago, I was really excited about it. I like the director. I was interested in the subject. My father served in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations and little film or ink is dedicated to that part of World War II. And the movie seemed to start off well. But it devolved into a disjointed, unfocused boring waste of time. I regret watching few films but this is one of them.
There were some nicely done scenes -- the Japanese marching into town, the P-51s attacking the airfield (however I must note that a boy kept in a prison camp since the U.S. entry into the war would hardly have heard of a P-51, much less be able to recognize one; it wasn't developed until after the war started). But they were bright spots in a long boring movie.
It's not that I don't like character-driven movies. Schindler's List shows what Spielberg can do with that type of film. It's stunning. But there was little in the movie to make you care about the characters. And the boy's admiration for the Japanese after years of captivity seems awfully strange. I can see how he might admire them as warriors before the war. I've had European friends who were children during the war say they admired the Germans military prowess even though they were enemies. But I've talked to a lot of World War II POWs from the Pacific Theater and none of them ever acquired the slightest admiration for the Japanese during their captivity. I doubt a young boy, cruelly treated by them, would either.