Breaker Morant [Blu-ray]

Great film (one of my favorites!). "Breaker Morant" about a band of Australian soldiers in South Africa in the late 1800's, known as The Bushveldt Carbineers. The Carbineers were organized and charged with routing Boer Guerrillas who employed embarrassing hit and run tactics against British regulars; English vs German war, basically. They operated in small groups on horseback with (not surprisingly) carbine rifles. In the field for long periods, they had no permanent encampment, moving from place to place hunting down their adversaries.The film stars Edward Woodward as Harry "Breaker" Morant, whom the film is titled, who earned his nickname breaking horses back in Australia.Harry is well educated and enjoys fine music and poetry. He is depicted as a poet in the film, penning/reciting diction from Rudyard Kipling.Now commanding a squad of Carbineers, Harry enforces apparent orders from British high command to execute prisoners of war.When the war is brought to its inevitable conclusion, Harry and his officers are brought up on charges of war crimes by their own command. The premise is, the British are more than willing to sacrifice a few Australians to appease the Germans to achieve an accord. The British command assign Harry and his men an Australian attorney who has never tried a case, thinking it will be an open and shut matter. To their surprise, he puts up a rigorous defense for Harry and his men.The film follows the trial with flashbacks to scenes of soldering on the veldt. The film emphasizes the British disdain and prejudice against the Australians. It's a courtroom drama film, so there's a lot of talking and little shooting but it's a great film and Edward Woodward wonderfully portrays Harry Morant. Of course, like most Australian films (films depicting Australians) the characters are larger than life and IMHO a bit over played and over dramatic, but none-the-less, it's one of my FAVORITE FILMS.If you enjoyed "Zulu" and "Zulu Dawn", you'll undoubtedly like this as well. P.S. my wife hates all these films. When she's away, I have a popcorn marathon! LOL.

A newly mastered version of the picture-perfect 1979 film, with a whole disc of revealing extra material. Though it was seen by many as amt-war Vietnam allegory when it first came out, Breaker Morant has been revealed by time to be Bruce Beresford's masterwork, the late Edward Woodward's finest role, and one of the greatest war films ever made. It is also one of those rare works that explores moral ambiguity with an absolutely even hand.Like the Clint Eastwood film Unforgiven or Gwyn Griffin's underrated novel "An Operational Necessity", Breaker Morant examines why good men do utterly evil things. In this case, the good men are Australian and British Army officers ordered to suppress the guerrilla tactics of Boer freedom fighters during the Second South African War. In truth, the Boers are native farmers of Dutch descent, resisting the invasion of their country by a Great Britain interested in gold and diamonds. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Boers adopt asymmetrical warfare tactics: disrupting train tracks, ambushing outposts when the odds are favorable, but also melting back into the urban populace or the countryside when necessary. Harry "Breaker" Morant and his fellow officers are quietly told to up the costs of this Boier resistance by shooting prisoners and sympathizers, even after they've surrendered peacefully. Which they do, until arrested for political reasons as the curtain rises on the film.The incredible achievement of this film is to render the audience simultaneously sympathetic with the officers, drawn into their comradeship and even the sinewy poetry Morant writes, horrified at the casual atroicities on both sides, disgusted with the hypocrisy and treachary of the Britsh military court that tries them, and yet aware that their trial is both necessary and coldly just in its verdict.The final 10 minutes is perhaps the most perfectly photographed and edited film climax of all time: a dawn execution by firing squad on the rolling veldt of Africa, with a final sardonic verse heard in voiceover as the convicted officers abjure blindfolds and face their fate.

Classic movie. Compelling true story of the "show trial" court marshal of three Australian soldiers offered up as sacrificial lambs by the British empire during the final days of the Boer war in South Africa around the turn of the 20th Century to conceal the British commanders responsibility for issuing orders viewed as violating the gentleman's rules of war and allow the war to come to a conclusion without Germany intervening for the Boers (Dutch settlers of the region). This was "A Few Good Men", but with the court in on the conspiracy.

A masterful film on all levels - acting, directing, script, photography - and one of my favorites from the Australian "renaissance" of the 1970's and early '80's. As usual, the Criterion Blu-Ray looks and sounds better than any previous version, including the original theatrical release in 1980. The extras are limited but useful, specifically Beresford's 2004 commentary, a fine liner-note essay by Neil Sinyard, and a short, new documentary from historian Stephen Miller, who manages cogently in about 20 minutes to place the events of the film in the larger historical context of what he correctly relabels "The South African War," which is often described as Victorian Britain's Vietnam. If you're a fan of this film, you'll really appreciate the superb quality of this edition. If you've never seen it, this is the version you want to watch. (NOTE: I'm moderately hearing impaired, and as often happens with Amazon descriptions of Criterion releases, the features summary shows that the release contains English subtitles. It doesn't, but the original uncompressed mono soundtrack is exceptionally bright and clear.)

The film is over 30 years old but has not dated at all. It recounts a difficult and some would say, disgraceful episode in British colonial history. The acting is excellent and the backdrop convincing. The second Boer War was a cruel war which was largely avoidable and which has left its bitterness to this day. Fighting for Britain in south Africa were,surprisingly, not only many native Irish Catholics in Irish regiments but many colonials and this true story covers the plight of three such Australians. It makes clear how one could be shot (in this case literally so) to satisfy political expediency - in this case to futilely attempt to appease the German government. I would recommend this film whether you are interested in the history of the period or not. It is entertaining and gripping as a drama whether you know the end or not. Another instance of fact being more interesting than fiction.

Breaker Morant is a 1980 Australian film about the court martial of Breaker Morant, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring British actor Edward Woodward as Harry "Breaker" Morant and Jack Thompson as his attorney. The all-Australian supporting cast features Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitz-Gerald.Beresford co-wrote the screenplay from the 1978 play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts by Kenneth G. Ross.[3][4]Breaker Morant preceded other Australian New Wave war films such as Gallipoli (1981), The Lighthorsemen (1987), and the five-part TV series ANZACS (1985). Recurring themes of these films include the Australian identity, such as mateship and larrikinism, the loss of innocence in war, and also the continued coming of age of the Australian nation and its soldiers (later called the ANZAC spirit).The film was a top performer at the 1980 Australian Film Institute awards, with ten wins, including: Best Film, Best Direction, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, and Editing. It was also nominated for the 1980 Academy Award for the Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium).

One of the many counties coloured red on the world map in 1900 signifying that it was part of the huge British Empire was South Africa where a vicious regional war was being fought against the Boers. Edward Woodward plays Breaker Morant, a sergeant in the Beshveldt Carboneers, a unit of the British Army and when his popular and respected commanding officer is killed and mutilated in an ambush Morant orders a prisoner of war to be executed after it was discovered that he was wearing part of the officer's uniform under his clothes. Later one of Morant's comrades, played by Bryan Brown, with Morant's consent kills a Boer missionary they suspect is a spy who gave information to the Boers so they could set the ambush.Morant and his two comrades, both of whom were Australian, are hauled before a court martial and they claim that there was an "understanding" from no less a person than the Commander in Chief of the British Army, Lord Kitchener, that it was permissable to shoot Boer prisoners if they were found in British uniforms obtained after they were killed. As there was no written order issued by Kitchener to this effect Morant's defence was difficult to sustain and this was further weakened by international political considerations.The British Government wanted to make an example of the three defendants in order to facilitate a peace deal with the Boers and the Australian Government did not want to rock the boat so Morant and his comrades were on their own without any support from the military authorities or the political establishment. Not for the first time or the last time justice for individual soldiers was put aside in order to achieve wider political goals.Woodward is superb as Morant and the film is gripping and holds the attention throughout. The photography is beautiful and the finale is moving and brilliantly conceived.

I'm usually disappointed with a DVD if the picture quality isn't all that good, but it's such a brilliant film that I stopped being bothered by the disc's less than perfect picture quality soon after I started to watch it recently. Further proof of the film's brilliance is the fact that it stands up to multiple viewings. I've seen it quite a few times over the years, but was gripped from beginning to end again. One could be critical and say that the film was more concerned with expressing an anti-British slant on events instead of providing a more truthful perspective on them, but I still found the script to be very believable on the whole and the British top brass no doubt were deserving of some criticism. What we need now is for this film to get the type of very good remastering treatment that so many old classics have undergone recently.

Nicely done drama about the British war with the Boers, where a 'take no prisoners' policy was officially-unofficially adopted by some units and the courts martial that ensues when the 'wrong' person gets shot. We get to see two different sides, both brutal in their way, of British Empire management. A good drama and a cultural study, made by Bruce Beresford who went on to make the excellent 'Black Robe' that immerses the viewer in the mission of French Jesuit priests in Quebec, in 1634, and the troubles and revelations they encounter.Both are dark studies of turbulent clashes of cultures and interests. Breaker Morant. though not as accomplished as the latter Black Robe, is still a great film.