Customer Reviews

The Killing Fields (Widescreen)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my opion i think that this movie was great for our Government class to watch.

The Killing Fields was a very moving video. I am a high school student, therefore I have been desensatised for so long that I am not moved very often(if at all). The flick is a great teaching tool to anyone looking to educate themselves about Cambodia. I gave it a four because its got enough explosions, blood, gore, death, excitement,and knowledge to keep even the sleepiest of viewers attention. It didn't get a five due to the fairytale ending. Prang is reunited w/ Sydney, I didn't feel like that was reality. However it did not cheapen the movie at all. Its another good video that you will walk past a hundred times inthe video store and never watch. Watch it. Make yourself look at the death, and remember it. Some of the scenes makes your skin crawl, not because of blood,gore,or death...because it really happened.

Although there are mostly 5-star reviews here, this is not the type of movie to have posters with less than stunning reviews (except the political posts). This movie is obviously well-made and well-received (7 oscar nominations and 3 wins), but I found it to be too long at 141 minutes and it did not really hold my interest.

Director Roland Joffe said he interpreted the story as a love story and not a war movie, and indeed that seems to be the way he presents it. Playing John Lennon's "Imagine" at the end was a bit on the sentimental side, though.

I've watched it 2 or 3 times and just had a hard time sticking with it. There is almost enough material to expand into 2 movies.

DVD has a nice commentary, a short text-based blurb about actor Haing Ngor, a list of awards, cast/crew blurb, setup options and a trailer.

This is one of the most powerful movies I've seen in a while. Set in 1975 Cambodia, it details the rise of the Maoist guerrillas of the Khmer Rouge against the country and eventually the capital Phnom Penh. This movie is a true story about the journey of Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist working for an arrogant writer for the New York Times. Pran is forced to stay behind in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge expel all foreigners after the fall of the capital. Pran is then transferred to a forced labor camp, one of many in which almost the entire urban populations of Cambodia are sent to.

The Khmer Rouge's policy, consistent with that of Maoism and other communist groups, is that non-farmers are traitors. The Khmer Rouge are not discriminate, they kill anyone who they perceive as a threat to their power. And anyone they feel is not an uneducated farmer is a threat. Hence, the Khmer Rouge pursues relentlessly for evidence of pre-revolutionary life. Anyone found out to have been a doctor, teacher, soldier, government official, religious leader, anyone speaking more than one language, or anyone else suspected of being somewhat intelligent, are singled out and murdered. Pran survives by convincing his captors that he was a taxi driver before his imprisonment.

After seeing fellow prisoners picked off one by one for a variety of so-called crimes, Pran plans his escape. After seeing a man be hauled off for execution for the crime of having uncalloused hands, Pran escapes through the rice paddies and heads for the Thai border. Along the way, he's recaptured by a supporter of the Khmer Rouge, who has his own farm. This farmer's own ideas and alliances illustrate the real life factioning and infighting that existed within these Maoist's own ranks.

Pran finally makes it into Thailand, where he is reunited with the writer Sydney he'd once worked for in Phnom Penh. Thus ends the movie as an excellent, powerful true story of one man's survival of, percentage-wise, the worst genocide in history. The one flaw of the movie is the tendency to sneak a little blame in there directed at America, who's bombing of NVA supply routes through Eastern Cambodia is somehow linked to the rise of Maoist guerrillas in the north. History shows full well that these insurgents were supported and instigated by China and elements of the North Vietnamese communist government. While U.S. bombing of enemy supply routes certainly didn't help stabilize the country when the Cambodian government needed stability very badly, it is a blatant deception to blame the emergence of the Khmer Rouge on it.

For more personal stories of genocide survivors, read "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields", by Dith Pran. Some of these stories make Pran's look like a picnic by comparison.

This is a harrowing film to watch at times, but is a powerful and moving story. So few of us really understood the true horror of the Pol Pot regime and it is a travesty that it is only now, almost 30 years after the atrocities that the perpetrators are only now being brought to justice. What is incredible about this film is that the actor playing the part of Sam Waterson's Cambodian colleague, is himself Cambodian and actually lived through an almost identical experience to that of the film character. It must have taken extraordinary courage to revisit and reenact scenes from a nightmare most people would rather forget. An amazing story of courage and the irrepressibility of the human spirit. A film all of us should watch.

Most war movies from the 80's are about Vietnam and sometimes the horrible events in Cambodia are snowed under.
'The Killing Fields' is about the friendship between NY Times Reporter Syd and his Cambodian interpreter and later friend. When the western journalists flee the country they try and get him with them by forging a passport but it fails and Tran stays behind. He gets caught by the Khmer Rouge and forced to work in slavery, by not letting known he speaks English he survives and escapes and finds his friend Syd again.

The movie is great and emotional. Some scenes are awful but lifelike. Though shot in Thailand, the scenery is beautiful. The acting is fine too, the man playing Tran won an oscar. His own personal life is very closely linked to the events in Cambodia too and this movie is also in part about him. He unfortunately got killed in the late 1990's, possibly by the Khmer in LA.

In 1984 Sam Waterston starred as New York Times reporter Sidney Scheinberg in "The Killing Fields". Clint Eastwood was offered the role, but turned it down. He said it was because he is a "Western WASP," not an East Coast Jew, but he probably ran from it because he is a Republican and knew that Scheinberg had been a biased Vietnam reporter and did not want to promote that. Scheinberg filed numerous reports advocating the message that the U.S. was not doing the right thing in Vietnam. The early part of the film promotes the liberal myth that it was U.S. bombs and U.S. aggression that created the situation in Cambodia. The perfidy of such a concept is mind-boggling. The U.S. did create the situation in Cambodia, because it was U.S. Democrats, led by Chappaquiddick Teddy, who de-funded the South Vietnamese until they collapsed. Then they have the bluster to tell the world, using their powerful friends in the film industry, that the Cambodian holocaust was not because they disarmed the forces of freedom, but because the Communists were incensed at American crimes, therefore justifying their rampages of mass murder against innocent civilians. Is there some alternate Universe in which this can be true. Answer: No.
However, like a fair number of films that liberals make, "The Killing Fields" ends up promoting a semi-conservative message when it gets into truthful events that cannot be portrayed any other way. Pol Pot's murder of Cambodia is undeniable. In putting it on film, it simply speaks for itself. There is little to conclude in walking out of the theatres that showed "The Killing Fields" beyond the simple conclusion that, "Communists killed millions of people," which is a fact that does not allow for much leeway. Leftists still try to find that leeway, however.

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
STWRITES@AOL.COM

I put off seeing this movie for so long, despite my fascination with that period of history (the late 70's) in Cambodia. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle viewing graffic depictions of the Khmer Rouge atrocities I had read so much about. Finally in college, while taking a course in Southeast Asian politics, my curiousity got the best of me and I rented it. I was pleased to find that the movie, while certainly intense, wasn't too much to stomach - even for a wimp like myself (no explicit torture scenes or anything like that). Yet I still walked away with a good feel for how horrible that era in Cambodia really was. Now I've seen this film countless times!

I continue to be amazed by the one scene where Dith Pran is saying goodbye to Sidney Schanberg, as he (Pran) is being forced into Khmer Rouge custody. Meanwhile Schanberg reluctantly gets to return to a life of freedom and luxury. Their farewells are so poignant and the music is PERFECT, with the rain pouring down on them - DAMN this scene is haunting.

Equally intense is the scene showing the heartpounding, panicked evacuation of the American embassy in Cambodia, as well as the cathartic finale of the movie: the way a zealous Schanberg sprints across the New York Times newsroom after receiving word from the Red Cross, leading to the film's fantastic final scene. It gets me teary-eyed every time.

Aside from the emotional fervor this movie inspired in me, I believe it was also very accurate from what I've read and researched. Even down to the cranky, impatient mannerisms of the real-life Schanberg, which were portrayed by an outstanding Sam Waterston. (Outstanding performances were given by all in fact, especially John Malcovich and Dr. Haing Ngor - who has an astounding past of his own with the Khmer Rouge.)

While overwhelmingly bleak, The Killing Fields was ultimately inspirational. Watch this movie to be educated, and moved!

Prepare yourself for the most unique motion picture experience of your life time. The one and only movie (to my notion) about one of the most vile (and soon to be forgotten) atrocities committed in the 20th century, The Cambodian Holocaust. This is the true and sad story of journalist Sydney Chanberg and his native cambodian companion Dith Pran. In 1975, just a couple of month after the last american left Vietnam, Phonm Phen (the Capital of Cambodian)fell in the murdering hands of the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot's deadly guerrilla) and soon the country entered into a world of unspeakable horror where 3 million innocent people, most of them intellectuals, doctors, teachers and others touched by education were sadly murdered in the "killing Fields" by a brainwashing stupid idealogy of a Utopical peasant state.Welcome to Year Zero. Communist guerrillas not older than 15 years old murdered men, women and children, young and old in terms to create a peasant country. The story focuses on Dith Pran, Schanberg's aid and friend who saves him from execution. Pran is captured and sentenced to forced labor in the Killing Fields where he sees his whole family, friends and colleagues being murdered in cold blood and with no justification. This is a deeply and touching story of survival and how friendship and loyalty can break all the bounderies set by human cruelty and ideology. This beautiful film not to be missed and also a great history lesson on one of the cruelest events of the 20th century. This is the only film of my notion about the Cambodian Holocaust and this is deeply sad!!! Why does the media only exploit the Jewish Holocaust as a lesson of cruelty and survival....what about the Armenian Holocaust, The Cambodian Holocaust, Kosovo and Rwanda??? Do they need to rule the world like the Jews to tell their story? This is one of the most important films in my collection and I'm very happy to own it. A great history lesson of courage and survival is packed in this DVD...let the voice of the 3 million innocent Cambodians murdered in the Killing fields be heard. And I do agree with Schanberg speech...the U.S.A had lot to do with the early events that drove to the Cambodian Holocaust and all the other post Vietnam war Southeast Asian conflicts.
BEAUTIFUL MOVIE.

THIS MOVIE is the best one there is out there that deals with injustice in third world countries. The Khmer Rouge not only destroyed a country's innocence and faith in goernment, they wiped out nearly 2.5 million people in 3.5 years. This is the best thing besides a documentary if you have a need to learn about this. I would not reccomend it as a "fun" movie.