Strong and Moving!

Excellent, a Must See

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

We recently watched three movies about the building of the Trans-Burma Railway: The Bridge on the River Kwai; The Railway Man; and To End All Wars. All three movies were great in their own right but THIS movie moved me and inspired me in a way that few movies have! It is a GREAT movie, seems to be VERY historically accurate, and is well made and well acted!That we could all learn these lessons in our every day life!

This should have been the definitive war movie about the building of the Burma railway, but it falls short on many levels. The characters are far too spread out and the editing lets this down. The second half moves into Christian mishmash which does nothing for character or plot. Tireless voice overs ask imponderable philosophical questions, without solution or redemption. An implausible scene shows one man being crucified by the "evil" Japanese officer who then has a tear in his eye, even though his life revolves around the Bushido code. Nothing really makes any sense despite vague philosophical pretensions about forgiveness. Could have been great.

I am an aspiring filmmaker and enjoy, possibly obsess, on watching a lot of movies. I am known as the "movie guy" and people ask me for my two cents about films all the time. When I heard of "To End All Wars" it sounded promising and decided to give it a try. It never came to a theater near me, but I did get to rent it when it came out on DVD. I have to say that touched me beyond any movie I have never seen and you can't even imagine how many movies I have seen. The directing was beyond glorious, that I'm sure Steven Spielberg would be moved. I very much liked how he portrayed the POW's and the Japanese soldiers. The POW's are very shaky, hand-held look while on the opposite side the Japanese are very still and clear cut. The story was powerful and something everyone can learn from. The Christian subtext is light and only adds to the characters. The acting was fantastic! Robert Carlyle and Kiefer Sutherland gave amazing performances, but I do think that they were upstaged by Ciaran McMenamin and Mark Strong. They convicted me and touched my soul as they brought out, only what I can call true life. If you want to watch something that will make a true impact on you and leave you breathless, then this is the movie to go with. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

How did this not get a MASSIVE distribution deal? How did this not get an amazing cinematic release? This Film would have made History. I guess this is just the way the Film World is for new film makers, and new independent film makers. What they don't realize is that even though the mob in Hollywood may have not liked David to much, or that no one took a massive bite into the distribution/cinematic release is that they just missed out on what could have been an amazing, AMAZING thing for the film world. Not only for their wallets but in every other aspect. I would still like to see this Film re-released in the Cinema, and have a big build up. I still think it could pull it off, even all these years later!