An Exceptional Film

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2012)

The Killing Fields is an important film. It tells the story of two journalists—one American and one Cambodian—struggling to stay alive in war-torn Cambodia. Of course, it tells a bigger story too, namely the result of the bombing of Cambodia by the United States and subsequent atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge: torture, slavery, brainwashing, increasingly indiscriminate murder on a mass scale. All very real and very terrible things. The film manages to tackle all of this heavy material without glossing anything over, (I'm looking at you Hotel Rwanda) and without making it so brutal as to be unwatchable.
Unfortunately, the majority of the acting and dialogue in The Killing Fields isn't quite good enough to do the aforementioned atrocities justice. That is not to say these aspects of the film are bad, they're perfectly adequate. I just wish they were as flawless as some enraptured reviewers would have you believe.
Ironically, (and perhaps even fittingly) it's the non-actor Cambodian children that give the most convincing, (and touching) performances in the movie. They may just be being themselves, but it lends the film an authenticity which few of the trained actors were able to capture with any consistency.
The cinematography is spot on. Brilliantly balanced and flawlessly framed, it's practically symbolic in a few shots. Just beautiful. All of the filming appeared to be shot on site, in Cambodia and elsewhere, a practice that the majority of modern directors seem to have forgotten about, which is a shame since no amount of CGI or special effects are as convincing as the real place. The sets look 100% real, nothing looks staged.
The music ranges from moving, to merely fitting, to downright strange and painfully 80's. Fortunately, there's more of the former than of the latter. With the exception of a few crude sound effects, The Killing Fields sounds quite good overall.
While important, The Killing Fields is unlikely to ever be a very popular film. While it's technically a "war movie" (in part) it never glorifies violence, or tries to make it look cool. There's plenty of violence, of course, but it's more of the uncensored 6 o' clock news variety. Obviously, the film also draws attention to a very dark page from the United States past, and raises a lot of uncomfortable questions, which is bound to turn some people off. However, for anyone mature enough to handle its subject matter, and empathetic enough to explore the wide range of emotions covered in the film, The Killing Fields should really not be missed.
7.9/10