we still suffer from World War I's effects

Rating: 9/10 (18 August 2015)

Russell Crowe's directorial debut casts him as a man trying to find out what became of his son, who fought in the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli. You may have seen Peter Weir's 1981 movie about that battle and how the British Empire used the Australians as cannon fodder. Crowe's movie does sympathize with Turkey, showing how the Turks also suffered from the war, although it's drawn criticism for ignoring the Armenian Genocide (which the Ottomans perpetrated during the battle). Millions of lives on all sides senselessly lost.
Here we are 100 years later and we still see the effects of World War I playing out. A notable result was that the Nazis rose to power due the crippling reparations imposed on an already demoralized Germany. Furthermore, the seeds for the Vietnam War got sown when the rabidly racist Woodrow Wilson refused to listen to a young Ho Chi Minh at the Versailles Negotiations. The current bloodshed in the Middle East resulted from the British and French carving up of the former Ottoman Empire. To crown everything, the Armenians acquired only a tiny piece of land while the Palestinians, Kurds and Yazidis didn't even get their own countries.
Anyway, it's a really good movie. There are some intense scenes, as there should be. I recommend it.