DVD | To End All Wars

Rating: R16 - Depicts Graphic & Realistic War Scenes.
Duration: 120 mins.
Genre : Drama.
Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Robert Carlyle, Mark Strong, James Cosmo, Ciaran McMenamin, Kimura Sakae, Masayuki Yui.
Release Date: Available now.

To End All Wars is based on Ernest Gordon’s accounts of what happened to him and his fellow Scottish Argyll’s after their surrender and imprisonment by the Japanese.

Mistreated, starved and forced to build the ‘Railroad of Death’, the mixture of Scottish and English prisoners have to endure both extreme physical and emotional hardship at the hands of the sadistic Japanese guards, who according to their culture, saw the prisoners as nothing more than disobedient animals.

It’s a side of World War Two that is often forgotten, with Hollywood’s preference for telling stories about the holocaust. Not that the holocaust isn’t a worthy story, but it seems that the Japanese hated the allied prisoners with as much vehemence as Hitler did the Jews.

The story is told powerfully through the eyes of three main characters; Ernest Gordon, a man who wanted to teach philosophy after the war, Major Ian Campbell who wants nothing more but to bring vehemence on the ‘Nips’ and the lone American, Lieutenant Tom Rigden who wants only to look out for number one.

How To End All Wars weaves the story through these there totally different individuals is sheer genius, and more than makes up for the lack of budget and some minor heavy-handed direction.

It’s worth noting that this is not an all-guns-blazing war story – in fact it has little if any real ‘war scenes’. It’s all about what happened to the men at the hands of their captors, and the decisions they made, and how these decisions determined who they became.

Through Gordon’s teaching of his fellow prisoners, with philosophy and the Bible, the men slowly changed their views of their captors (with the notable exception of Campbell) and their lives and work habits reflected this, and in the end their own humanity shamed the Japanese who left them be at the climatic stages of the war.

This is one of the most powerful and emotional movies that I have seen. It’s themes of sacrifice and forgiveness are the undeniable life force of this movie, and will force you to consider what the Bible truly means when It calls you to love your enemy.

Food for thought
It’s all to easy to wish bad things on people who have wronged you, but why not try the exact opposite?