WORLD TOUR Day 50 - Cambodia
BEFORE: I know it seems like I'm bouncing between comedy and tragedy here, but the two are not so far off when you think about it. The point of "The Hangover Part II" was that Thailand can be a very dangerous place, and isn't that probably the same point that this film makes about Cambodia? Just putting that out there.
Linking from "The Hangover Part II", somehow Ken Jeong was in "Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon" with John Malkovich (last seen in "Secretariat"). Yeah, that's a head-scratcher.
THE PLOT: A photographer is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody "Year Zero" cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians.
AFTER: I almost did a tirade yesterday about how Hollywood should stop making movies that people "want" to see (which leads to making the same "Hangover" movie again and again) and instead focus on movies that people "need" to see. This is clearly one of those films that needs to be seen. Unfortunately it won't do well on my scale, which measures how entertained I feel afterwards, and there wasn't much here I found entertaining.
Important? Sure. Powerful? Definitely. But entertaining? Nope, nope. Not in the way that a war movie like "Windtalkers" or "Platoon" can be. I'll probably get a lot of heat for rating this one lower than a piece of Hollywood pablum like "The Hangover Part II" though. This film made it into the countdown based on its reputation and significance.
Let me be clear - I'm against communist regimes, genocide, and war in general. In case you were wondering. But like a lot of folks, I turn to movies as a form of escapism and fantasy, and this is just way too real. Maybe this would have been better as a documentary of some fashion, since it's not what I look for in a dramatic film. I could get into the finer points of story arcs and character development, which happen to be absent here - instead there's just the action, and mostly it's bombs going off and people getting shot in the streets.
I agree the story should be told, but, man, what a way to bring the room down.
Also starring Sam Waterston (last seen in "Capricorn One"), Haing S. Ngor, Julian Sands (last seen in "A Room With a View"), Spalding Gray (last seen in "Kate & Leopold"), Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "Silkwood").
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 333 miles / 536 km (Bangkok, Thailand to Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 23,734 miles / 38,199 km
RATING: 3 out of 10 passport photos
No comments:
Post a Comment