A Solid Deep Story With A Great Cast and Sad Historical Value

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2010)

The Killing Fields is a surprising film, that could have matched any Vietnam set film as its set in Cambodia. Most know of the Vietnam War, but almost only half of the world still remembers what Cambodia went through during Pol Pot's heinous ethnic cleansing of the people with the help of his brutal regime the Khmer Rouge. They systematically murdered over 2 million Cambodians who were to them 'undesirables' and needed to be removed.
The Killing Fields is a film that realistically portrays the genocide, and the infamous Killing Fields where most of the genocide victims ended up, and attempting to cross the watery fields their remains made a soup to crawl through. This film is extremely sad and hard hitting, as the Cambodian genocide never really got much coverage as say the Vietnam War did. The filming of the event in this film is very well done and captures the horrific moments of the genocide. People being herded onto trucks bound for executions, children being murdered in front of their parents.
This film could in my opinion match even most big-budget Jewish Holocaust films with how gritty the feel of this film is. The film follows American photographer for a US newspaper who is stuck in the country following the Khmer Rouge's take-over played by Sam Waterston, however it is the second and most frank viewpoint of character Dith Pran portrayed by real life Khmer Rouge survivor Haing S. Ngor who was sadly murdered in 1996 due to his views of the Khmer Rogue.
Haing S. Ngor is amazing surviving the Genocide, seeing many of his friends and countrymen hacked down by the Khmer Rogue. This film is for those who wish to see a tragic event just as sad as the Holocaust and indeed the Vietnam War. Its disturbing at times but must be to portray the events of the Genocide. This is a classic in its own name now, and its a film I can watch over and over again.