Breaker Morant (Masterworks Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bryan Brown, Charles 'Bud' Tingwell, Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson, John Waters (III)DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-12-14
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Breaker Morant (Masterworks Edition)
Movie Review: The first taste of the 20th century...
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this movie as a pre-teen with my father and it made quite an impression on me. Even then I had read many books about the British empire, even one history on the Zulu wars, so I had something of a context for the movie. I was thinking about Breaker Morant again the other day and decided to order it from Amazon and watch it once more. I am glad I did. The movie is as excellent as I remember it. This is a courtroom drama of three Australian soldiers brought up on charges of shooting enemy prisoners, despite the fact they were acting under orders when doing so. Between the courtroom scenes one is treated to vignettes of the soldiers in the field where the events happened. The movie, based on actual events, is stirring, poignant and obviously memorable. Well worth watching.
It does an excellent job of portraying the differences betwixt the British and Australian national characters and the underlying tensions between these groups. It also shows how geopolitical events can conspire to make scapegoats of good, decent, and loyal soldiers. In this case the British are forced to prosecute these soldiers in order to appease the Germans, who at the time of these events had the most powerful army in the world. If the Germans had weighed in on the side of the Boers it would have been disastrous for the British. In order to avoid this the Australians are tried as war criminals. Thus WWI was avoided for another 15 years.
The movie is eerily prescient of so many problems which plague the world today. The problems of fighting an enemy who is not in uniform, who employs hit and run guerilla tactics, and who is not a soldier of sovereign nation. How do you fight them? What rules do you adhere to if they do not adhere to your rules? If you capture them, how do you treat them? These are issues we have been dealing with since the events of this movie and are caught up with yet today with the war on terrorism. It is all to easy to imagine the military today offering up it's own soldiers as scapegoats in order to bring the conflict in Iraq to an end. Beneath the stirring courtroom drama, the movie also shows how so many other elements of our current military and world situtation have roots in this conflict. The special forces units we employ, even the word Commando, trace their roots to the Boer conflict. Concentration camps trace their roots to the Boer war as well, an invention of the British, not the Germans. Even the shooting of prisoners, despite being under orders, and the treatment of insurgents, harkens to scenes of Nuremberg and Guatanamo Bay.
The movie is well worth watching for it's historicity, showing early developments in guerilla war, concentration camps, terrorism, counter-insurgency tactics, and special forces, as well as the slow slide of the British empire and how geopolitical forces can grind indivudal soldiers to dust as easily as enemy actions. It is also a splendid courtroom drama on top of all that. I highly recommend it.
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