Brotherhood

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2005)

I can see how comparisons with Saving Private Ryan have been made, and like many others, I was slack jawed in the cinema watching SPR in all its brutal glory, but I have to say that this film was superior in terms of character and storyline. The plot in SPR was naff and the ending lame, but here we have an intelligent and well structured story set in a civil war involving 2 brothers, who are innocently carted off to war, (in much the same way as many farmers and fishermen of the North) If war is tragic, then civil war is tragedy in the extreme.
The film does not avoid anything in its treatment of men at war. the sense of brotherhood in hard times, the de-humanisation of self and enemy, and the recognition that, in the end we are attracted and ultimately addicted to forming tribes and looking for conflict. It descends into real paranoia, so that it's difficult to sense a real message (but then again we haven't had any resolution to warfare over the last 2000 years) It should be remembered that the clash of ideologies and paranoia portrayed here, was reflected in the McCarthyism centred in the same Hollywood which spawned Saving Private Ryan. This is a superior film, and one no less enjoyable to western audiences by the subtitles (remember Das Boot?) Watch it.