It
goes to show that just because a movie is rated R and features brutal violence,
doesn’t mean it can’t be preachy. Immediately, after a brief, clumsy
introductory sequence narrated by Ciaran McMenamin (inexplicably casted as the
main character) we are plunged with the small band of Scottish soldiers into a
1942 Japanese POW camp. We know nothing about these soldiers, and for the rest
of the movie, we don’t learn anything else. That’s almost true. They have little to no personality, and as Mark Twain pointed out, it's hard to care about the death of a character who never lived in the first place.
Briefly, I was interested in Robert Carlyle’s conflicted Major Campbell, but he quickly morphed into a predictable character with a
foreseeable end.
