Harrison's Flowers (2000)

anti-war movie
Well-made movie with high production values (true widescreen, good music, sound) manages to keep interest alive in spite of having very little story material to work with. I disagree with the claim that the movie was unrealistic. For example, sneaking past the snipers by crawling through the brush a hundred yards away is not incredible as depicted. And smiling at the checkpoints was a good rouse: it made the sentries think the journalists were on their side, so of course they wanted them to take their pictures.

The purpose of the movie seemed to be mainly to describe, to show the human costs of war. No attempt at understanding this particular war, just showing the atrocities. At least they had the decency to say that BOTH sides were committing atrocities. Usually, in American movies it's only the Serbs that are the bad guys.

Another fair-minded and human-level film, made by a Yugoslav, is [[ASIN:0767825225 Savior]].

It's all very well to say that war is bad, but we already know that. The question is, what do you do when you are attacked? This is what Americans are still arguing about. We had better figure it out. In twenty years, much of Europe may be in the same fix as Yugoslavia fifteen years ago. Read [[ASIN:0385514727 While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within]]. In thirty years, America may be in the same mess. Read [[ASIN:0595435246 While America Sleeps: How Islam, Immigration and Indoctrination Are Destroying America From Within]].

Yes, war is hell, but so is being slaughtered like cattle. Which is worse?

See this movie. It may be your future. It will almost certainly be your children's.

Well-made
In a word? "Good."

This is a very moving film, which touches on many things -- not least of which is the role of the press in times of war. This ethical question has not become any less important with the Iraq war, and will undoubtedly increase in its importance in wars to come.

Overall, this is a very well-produced film, with very talented actors indeed, that will definitely become one of my most frequently watched films. The one thing that could be improved on, however, and that could've pushed this to be one of my favourite films, would be the plot. Not the plot of the war, of course, that is a well-stated fact.

No, I'm speaking specifically about the plot of the journalist-wife who goes into this psychiatric state, yet is allowed to travel into a war-zone instead of being prescribed psychiatric help. I do find this a bit hard to fully believe, and this takes up a bit too much of the film, in my opinion.

But still, put the popcorn on -- a good movie, by all accounts.

Sarah Sarah
Oddly this movie includes some of the best acting and some of the worst I've seen recently. Adrian Brody as a hard-nosed photographer in a theater of war is really compelling; meanwhile, Andie MacDowell, handsome as ever but no more talented, delivers every line in a disconcertingly wooden way.

This disjunction somehow seems apropos of the film's gripping and (to my eye) realistic portrayal of the scene of war: gray, monotonous, punctuated by horrifying violence. In some of the shots inside the car, the dull rhythm of the windshield wipers scraping across the window of the grimy TV van attempting to nose its way further into the war zone becomes like the tell-tale heart. I about jumped out of my skin when they were shot at!

The movie, in short, has some astonishingly good moments, especially in the war scenes. The male actors are really impressive, though David Strathairn is assigned more than even he can deliver when he must remain catatonic for over a year (I think there is a Shirley Temple movie with a similar hospital scene in which a bandaged war veteran groans "Sarah, Sarah" -- A Little Princess?). Sentimentalized tripe. At the same time, the film is unblinking in its unsentimentalized portrayal of war. Contradictions... contradictions. Still, worth watching.