Gallipoli

Peter Weir has long been one of my favorite directors, and he has had a career consumed by subtle, quiet, lingering films. He can make the most banal concept seem thrilling and suspenseful; a perfect example is the Harrison Ford film "Witness." It could have easily become a stupid, insulting, exploitative "thriller." The ending is, in retrospect, quite ridiculous. But Weir has a strange ability to make anything seem realistic.

"Gallipoli" is one of his older films, from 1981, and it stars a huge cast of names - most famous today, of course, Mel Gibson...whose name is now splattered across the front of the DVD case.

The story is a true one and follows a group of young Australian men who join the ANZACs in World War I. They are sent to Gallipoli, and amidst personal and emotional turmoil they must learn to band together and fight the Turkish Army.

The movie is long, as another reviewer on the site points out. But all of Weir's films are. What I didn't like about his most recent - "Master & Commander" - is that it used special effects (exteriors of ships, etc.) and action sequences (raging storms) to compensate for the slow bits... and came across (to me anyway) as quite dull and down-trodden.

"Gallipoli" is a great film - slow, subtle, low-key. It's a bit like an Australian version of "All Quiet on the Western Front." I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys slower films and can appreciate character-driven dramas. Don't go near it if your attention span was dimming during "xXx2."