If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Further to the remarks of another reviewer, this movie is not without its flaws but, on the whole, it makes for a fantastic insight into what I try to accomplish (from an educational sense) each time I lead a trek on the Kokoda Track.As the owner of a small business specialising in treks to the Kokoda Track, I pride myself - as well as the rest of our team - on educating those that make the effort to walk such a sacred trail about the Kokoda campaign.It's difficult to display the overwhelming sensation I often see when our groups gain a slight understanding of what Australian soldiers had to endure.Let's be clear and say that this is a film, however for what it is - the movie definitely portrays life as an Australian soldier during this horrendous period and provides a small insight into what they had to endure.I applaud the film-makers for what they have achieved with this film and will be recommending it to all Getaway Trekking hikers along the Kokoda Track.Sue Fitcher Getaway Trekking - Australia http://www.getawaytrekking.com.au

There have been a number of relatively realistic movies about war that have been released over the past twenty-five years or so -- "Platoon," "Saving Private Ryan," "Blackhawk Down" -- but this one has to be among the most brutal of them.For one thing, combat in a rain forest is about as awful as it gets. The opening images tell us what to expect. First, there are some arty shots of leaves and war materials, all dripping with water, and a few shots of animal life -- borrowed, maybe, from the poetic "The Thin Red Line" -- while a solemn voice describes the situation facing an untrained and ill-equipped group of Australian engineers hastily conscripted into a military unit designed to stop the Japanese advance across the mountains of New Guinea, save Port Moresby, and thus Australia. The Americans are in no position to help and the "chocos" are outnumbered ten to one by the enemy.Then we see a mountain of yellow mud from which a half-clothed man emerges as in an animated cartoon. The man is coated from head to foot with dripping mud and carries a rifle that can barely be distinguished for what it is. He slips and slides down a mountain trail, past a long line of stretcher bearers hauling the wounded uphill. He finds the mate he was looking for. But when he shakily unbuttons the man's shirt, the intestines spill out, and out of them slides a living snake. It's a combination of a bad dream and a flash forward but it tell us this isn't going to be lighthearted fare.It's a riveting story of a patrol, half a dozen or so men, sent forward as an "early warning line" to warn of the approach of the Japanese. Half of them die. And when they die, they don't just stop a bullet, grasp their chests and slump wide-eyed into the sludge either. They are riddled by machine guns; they have a bayonet thrust through their orbital socket into their brain; they're tied to a tree and used as bayonet practice. Squibs? They're so yesterday.There was hardly a moment when I could look away from the screen, although at times, what with the raggedy uniforms and the coats of blood and ooze, it was hard to tell one character from another. There were also moments when the dialect was a bit confusing. "Chocos and sinkers in the same bloody hole." (At least that's what I think they said.) I also wondered exactly how graphic a violent film had to be to achieve its end. The horrors of living in a tropical rainforest are bad enough -- the ants, the mosquitoes, the constant filth. All the men are sick with one disease or another. Do we need to see one or two taking a particularly urgent dump because of dysentery? Do we really need to see a helpless man shiver and scream while a bayonet is thrust through his eye? I'm not arguing that explicit brutality makes for a poor movie. I'm just raising the question of how far we ought to go.It's an exhausting tale. Men haul themselves up mountains and slide back down again through the dripping shrubbery, carrying packs full of equipment. And at times I was as lost as they were. By the end, you're likely to feel as spent as the survivors. And when a colonel addresses the men and gives them the expectable pep talk, it seems like a necessary catharsis. He almost chokes up when he tells them that they've been made to witness some things no one should ever have to see, and he is so right.The performances are fine, with no one standing out in any of the few principal roles. The direction is professional and the sparse musical score apt. The camera does wobble once in a while but only functionally, when it adds to the tension of a scene. The technique isn't used indiscriminately as it is in so many current action movies like the "Bourne" franchise. The few scenes of combat are well handled. It always adds a touch of verisimilitude when a man under fire has to stop to reload and we see his hands trembling as he inserts another clip.A nice job by cast and crew, covering a part of the war that was almost completely lacking in glamor but necessary nonetheless.

Anyone who has rubbished this film has no real idea of either jungle warfare, the Kokoda retreat or the unit about whom the story is based. In fact, the only real criticism(and the reason why I only gave it 8) was due to the minimal depth of general detail because of the budgetary restrictions.I wont bother to point out individual ignorance here as most comments say more about the critic than they do about the movie. It is NOT a movie about Kokoda, but about a small part of the retreat of the 39th battalion from Kokoda to Isurava where the remnants were relieved by the 2/14th battalion AIF. The 39th was a MILITIA unit. Not regulars. It was made up of conscripts, was poorly trained(compared to AIF units) and was virtually shanghai'd to New Guinea. None of the troops had any military experience, let alone jungle warfare experience and most had never seen a jungle before. Yet this battalion held up the advance of between 3x and 9x their number(varied depending upon the place) of Japanese veteran troops who at that time were the undefeated and undisputed masters of jungle warfare(In fact it was the Australians at Milne Bay who gave the Japanese army its first defeat in WW2 about two weeks later, not the Americans at Guadalcanal).I have had quite a large amount of experience with terrain like this and was always grateful that no one was shooting at me at the time. You have to experience mud to your neck to believe it possible and you must also realise that along the Kokoda trail it was hot and wet during the day and freezing cold and wet during the night and virtually every soldier had malaria and dysentery. The individuals in the movie portrayed quite accurately how some of the 39th behaved as well as their fates. The comment that this was a "horror movie" was a total understatement as ALL Australians captured along the Kokoda trail by the Japanese were used for bayonet practice and the discovery of their mutilated corpses there as well as those left behind by the Japanese at Milne Bay made the taking of Japanese prisoners a very rare event. Naturally the (mostly unseen in the movie as it was in real jungle warfare) Japanese also had disease and climatic problems in their advance but having had a relative who died as a Japanese POW I find it hard to be sympathetic towards them. One detail which was poorly understood by many who saw the movie, was that upon reaching Isurava the 39th was relieved by the 2/14th and gave up all of the "tommy" guns and Bren guns to that battalion. As they were starting to return to Port Moresby along the track the remnants of the battalion (~140 out of >500), all ill and with up to 30% weight loss. heard the huge outpouring of fire behind them as the Japanese threw a whole regiment at the 2/14th. Without a murmur or an order, the whole 39th turned around and with rifles only rejoined the fray and arrived at a crucial period.I do hope that one day someone will do a large budget movie on the retreat of the whole 39th along the trail. They deserve it. this movie is accurate but shows only a small fragment of their story.

It's funny that the ending of this film has been criticised here as unrealistic and melodramatic. One commenter even said it was of "Neighbours" (soap opera) quality.In fact the final scene is an exact reconstruction of a parade of members of the 39th battalion before their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner at the village of Menari. Every word spoken by William McInnes (playing Honner) in this scene is taken from the official record of the proceedings on that day.So much for "Neighbours".The film is good without being great. The budget supplies the reason. What it does convey is the hostile terrain over which the Australian soldiers had to lug all their supplies, including heavy artillery pieces... and then they had to fight the Japanese, who heavily outnumbered them, when they reached the top of the ranges.These were part-time soldiers, reservists with inferior training and green troops for the most part. Their job was to hold the line until the professional veterans (back from North Africa) arrived to take over. It was a war fought in platoon and section strength, with few pitched battles. Ever since the survivors of the two reserve battalions have been called "The Ragged Bloody Heroes", and deservedly so.Recently these has been some revisionism among politically biased historians, claiming that Kokoda was a waste of time and effort; that the Japanese had no intention of invading Australia. While they may not have been as serious about Kokoda as they were regarding the developing disaster at Gualalcanal, one thing is certain: if the Japanese had not been held back on the Kokoda Track, taking Port Moresby would have been a prize too easily won to refuse. Taking Moresby, and perhaps then Australia could have changed not only the war in the South West Pacific area, but perhaps the whole course of WW2.The men of the 39th battalion had no opportunity to speculate from afar, and safety, on the political potential of Kokoda as relevant to 2006 politics. They had to fight and die where they stood. That is why their story is worth telling, a story of small groups of men fighting shadows in a jungle nightmare scenario, without the option of surrender.