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Blood Oath - (1990)
At the close of the Second World War there was a complex reckoning due for the Japanese forces involving their POW camp operations - but the war crimes trials involving them were seemingly not as clear cut as their counterpart ones in Germany.
Blood Oath explores some of those issues by basing itself on the real-life war crimes trial of the Japanese (who were the POWs now) for their actions on Ambon Island. Unwarranted executions, starvation and vicious beatings - the process of accounting for this started with the digging up of mass graves of Australian servicemen. This film had all of the potential to be really gripping, but it kind of gets bogged down in side-issues at times - it puts courtroom strategy above the interesting moral issues at play. Bryan Brown leads as best he can as prosecutor Captain Cooper, and he's backed up by Russel Crowe, who takes a back seat due to the fact that this was his film debut. Terry O'Quinn also stars as an American Major trying to interfere so that Vice-Admiral Baron Takahashi (George Takei) gets off and as such can contribute to the reconstruction of Japan and her economy. It all sounds so interesting, and at times it threatens to become really good - but it's almost like
Blood Oath tries to cover too much ground, and too many separate trials, robbing the film of a good climax and any building of tension. We know the Japanese didn't give these prisoners court martials with all the attendant paperwork and record-keeping, so the pretense from one side and search from the other could probably have been handled with one or two lines of dialogue. As for the rest - all the ingredients are present, but they're simply not mixed together in a way that's ultimately as satisfying as it should be.
5/10
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The Fifth Estate - (2013)
An Australian accent is hard for non-Australian actors to master, even though some slog through repeated efforts (Robert Downey Jr. for example) despite mangling it and sounding ridiculous. Benedict Cumberbatch does the best in
The Fifth Estate that I've ever heard. As for his portrayal of Julian Assange and the general story of the explosive growth of Wikileaks and what that did to the world, along with his friendship with Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) - the truth or propaganda? I have no idea. Assange rattled the cage so much that I can't tell what's retribution, reflection or re-iteration, and as such it's hard to judge the man himself. The film is interesting without being absolutely smashingly great - and I have to admit that my favourite parts were the ones that dealt with U.S. State Department figures Sarah Shaw (Laura Linney) and James Boswell (Stanley Tucci) along with the mess they found themselves in after nearly every private word they'd had about foreign leaders was suddenly out there for everyone to read. Anyway - great stuff from Benedict Cumberbatch.
6/10