ingredients are there.. maybe too few cooks spoil the broth

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 1999)

There were times, while i was watching this film, that I thought it was going to break through into a truly great, cerebral and subjective perspective on War.. in a class with Das Boot. It somehow got a little too wrapped up in its poetic aspirations, though. The acting is very good, the cinematography is great, the characters are interesting and authentic, but somehow the chemistry just doesn't mix. A better editing job (shortening and simplifying it) would have helped, a more cohesive plot line focussed on fewer characters. The final scene of the defeat of the Japanese, showing them begging and pleading, looks ridiculous to anyone who knows of the grim and stoic determination of the Japanese soldiers in the Pacific theatre. It does, I think, capture the fog of war for the common grunt, its story line is not contrived like Saving Private Ryan, it really is an idea and film that could have worked, but missed..