To End All Wars

Year: 2001 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 9.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 10 / 10 8.0 / 10 8.0 / 10 10 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated R for war violence and brutality, and for some language. Nothing gratuitous - especially for what it could have been. The language is rough but to be expected in a realistic film.

Story

The film is based on the true story of Ernest Gordon (the same story Bridge on the River Kwai was based on), a prisoner in a WWII prison camp that participated in the building of a Japanese railroad. Gordon is a philosophy teacher, and after being nursed back from the brink of death by the faithful care of a fellow prisoner, he begins a "jungle academy" for the other prisoners. They study Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible - eventually learning that forgiveness of one's enemy is the only way to avoid deadly bitterness.

Suppositions

While Christian forgiveness and self-sacrifice is the paramount feature of the film, I was not 100% sure that I agreed with some of the more passivistic moments in the film. Some of the scenes are also a tad hard to swallow. Being based on a true story I am not sure how much of it was true, but it does detract a bit from the believability (e.g., the Japanese are so evil that they practically starve the prisoners to death, yet they get to keep their books, musical instruments, watches, etc.).

Significance

The message of the film focuses on survival - of the spirit and soul as well as the body. The prisoners must learn to find meaning in their lives despite circumstances and along the way learn self-sacrifice and forgiveness as well.