Review of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) by Kieran T — 06 Jan 2009

Great acting all round, Tom Conti is great, even the 2 pop stars Bowie and Sakamoto are good, but the stand out is the fantastic performance from Takeshi Kitano. Man he is a fine actor. His stupid face reminds me of Andrew Nguyen but he is so fun to watch.

Overall though, apart from the good acting and good score from Sakamoto, which is a bit overbearing at times, the script just goes crazy. I heard someone call this a thinking mans Bridge on the River Kwai, and I would disagree, while it is more character based than Kwai, its not a thinking movie its just a crazy movie. The flashbacks to Bowies brother did not work for me at all, I mean going from a POW movie to a Sound of Music type flashback, it really lost steam in the later half which was disappointing. And I was meant to hate Takeshi? he wasnt an extreme military general at all, so the final scene had no impact on me whatsoever, I mean Sakamoto was more of a badass general than Takeshi, I mean I was smiling everytime Takeshi was on screen.

Im definately interested in seeing more Oshima material though.