Breaker Morant [Blu-ray]

Comment:
    This movie ranks as one of my favorite movies of all time. Woodward's portrayal of Harry Morant is a masterpiece. It is all the more amazing in that it is based on a story hidden until long after the youngest of the officers involved died of natural causes. The movie showcases some fine talent in Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson as the defense attorney who shows up the British imperialist for what they are. This is an excellent movie worthy of anyone's collection. If this review was helpful, please add your vote. Although Britain's war against South African Boer farmers ended over a century ago, the issues raised in "Breaker Morant" seem as real as today's headlines: alleged prisoner abuse, a guerilla war that won't end, an occupying power versus a hostile population, and a search for scapegoats among the lower ranks. This film has it all: authentic scenery, disciplined soldiers produced from a long gone society, enemy combatants, court-martial proceedings and historical plot line which bring a little-known era of military history to life. Director Bruce Beresford did a splendid work picturing the court martial drama from so many angles and with so many really astonishing surprises. One of the high points in Australian cinema, Beresford's devastating film recounts the true story of Australian soldiers martyred for political expediency. Accurately depicting the injustice visited upon these three "colonials" by their British commanders, "Morant" is also a magnificent character study. Thompson is terrific as the lawyer who defends the men, but Woodward's resonant, heart-rending performance in the title role is reason enough to see this stunning film. Brilliantly adapted from a true story, poignantly filmed and outstandingly produced and acted, "Breaker Morant" stands alone at the big heap of great war movies. It's all here, of course: battle scenes, commando ambushes, honor, valor, betrayal, executions and a real 'kangaroo court martial'. The accused's fates are sealed from the opening salvo, as we bear witness to another example of the vast British empire taking no prisoners of its own, leaving innocent soldiers of the Commonwealth hung out to dry to protect its own repugnant brand of morality. The viewer senses this early on, but is compelled to watch every frame of this magnificent film. It will move you as few other films will, on almost every level of human compassion, duty and truth. In a film in which every line counts, the best line, quite possibly, is spoken by Lieutenant Morant, "These days its quite easy to be on the wrong side". A masterpiece. Breaker Morant, a fine Australian film made a generation ago, can be viewed in one of two ways, either being equally valid. It tells a straightforward story of true events that came to pass after the Boer War ended in 1900, in which a pair of valiant Colonial soldiers, one of whom a former horse "breaker" named Morant, are executed by firing squad in a probable and in some quarters still infamous miscarriage of justice. Victory having been achieved in this unpopular South African war, the British begin to mend fences with the uneasy Boer population and to that end seek out scapegoats whose punishment might appease Boer resentment over the savagery with which the British waged their anti-guerilla fight in the closing days of the hostilities. Selecting veterans responsible for the "execution" of members of a Boer partisan group, the British hierarchy gives world-wide center stage to this trial, and later to the punishment of two men (a third member of the accused trio is later spared death) most directly at the heart of the incident in which armed Boers masquerading as civilians died. This judicial action divided segments of the British population and engendered considerable resentment in Australia, as the soldiers put to death were brave and loyal military members, much needed by the Empire in a time of war and suddenly dispensable in a time of uneasy peace. It should also be noted that the Boers the condemned men shot that day were almost certainly guilty of being clandestine insurrectionists responsible for direct attacks on British forces in a conflict in which the distinctions between friend and foe had long since blurred and in which the rules of "civilized" Victorian-era combat had broken down in a very modern way. And of course as I mentioned Breaker Morant is also unavoidably metaphorical, as it was somewhat intended to be. The men killed by firing squad were a sort of "anymen" fighting in "anywar" be they British in Africa a century since, Americans in Vietnam forty years ago, or service personnel in Iraq today. In war there will always be cruelties, human beings under great pressure will on occasion snap, and when faced with an enemy who clothes himself in the guise of civilians, an individual's judgment of right and wrong will always fade from sharp focus. Breaker Morant is a good film, and its story is universal. And sad.