KOKODA.
Director: Alister Grierson Stars: Jack Finsterer, Travis McMahon, Simon Stone, Luke Ford, Tom Budge, Steve Le Marquand, Angus Sampson, Christopher Baker, Ewen Leslie, Ron Barrack, Shane Bourne, William McInnes
Reviewed by GREG KING
Along with Gallipoli, the exploits of Australian soldiers in holding back the Japanese advance on New Guinea’s famed Kokoda Trail in 1942 has become an enduring legend in our military history. Unfortunately, first time feature film maker Alister Grierson fails to do the legend justice with this rather prosaic re-enactment of this momentous event from our history.
The film tells of a small unit of inexperienced Australian militia (derisively referred to as “chocolate soldiers” because it’s assumed they will melt in the heat of battle) helping to build communications and supply lines in New Guinea. A handful of them find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and have to fight their way back to safety. Their desperate action eventually stretches the Japanese supply lines to breaking point and forces a retreat that ultimately prevents a feared invasion of Australia. Most of these toy soldiers come across as larrikins, with a broad sense of humour, for whom the war is a great adventure.
For a film of its ilk to succeed we need to identify with the characters and feel for them in their gruesome and gruelling predicament. However, the characters here are only sketchily drawn – there is no back-story – and they are one-dimensional. An ensemble cast of rising young local actors (including Jack Finsterer, Last Man Standing’s Travis McMahon, Tom Budge, and Luke Ford in his film debut) struggle to breathe life into the characters. Veterans Shane Bourne and William McInnes appear in small roles but make little impact.
Grierson recreates a couple of iconic images that have become an integral part of the Kokoda legend, due largely to the pioneering documentary work of Damien Parer. Grierson also seems to have been inspired by the almost ethereal look of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, with lots of “atmospheric” close up shots of spider webs, insects and natural phenomenon highly reminiscent of that film. However, here this cinematic artifice fails to add to the mood, and just seems derivative and out of place.
Grierson seems unsure whether to adopt an anti-war or pro-war stance, and the film never rises above the level of a rather clichéd “boy’s own” war story. Grierson depicts the Japanese soldiers in the grimmest possible light, and their atrocities are particularly gruesome and stomach churning. Some scenes are particularly strong stuff, and certainly nastier than what is offered up in many recent so-called “horror” films! Unlike more recent war films, in particular Jarhead, Kokoda lacks any contemporary resonances or implicit criticism of the futility of war.
Ultimately, Kokoda is a B-grade war film that’s not in the same calibre as Peter Weir’s powerful Gallipoli, one of the watershed films in the resurgence of the Australian film industry, and is likely to be forgotten as quickly as the dire Attack Force Z.
**1/2
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
Kokoda is not a name known much beyond Papua New Guinea and Australia. Yet, it holds for Australians, an importance and significance that places it alongside Gallipoli. The Kokoda trail in the highlands of New Guinea is where the Australians fought during World War II, many of them volunteer workers, reservists rather than fully trained soldiers (who did eventually arrive) and, with the help of the locals (called gratefully for their carrying the wounded to safety, the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels’) and stopped the Japanese advance on Port Moresby and an invasion of Australia.
Clearly, Kokoda is a story that demanded to be turned into a film. Hopes might have been for an equivalent of Peter Weir’s Gallipoli.
However, the film-makers have made a different option. They have stayed with a small group of men, confined the action to the muddy jungle and the continually falling tropical rain, to the unrelenting pressures of an unseen enemy and the continual physical discomfort of weather, lack of shelter, lack of food and perennial dysentery. In 90 minutes, the audience is taken into the experience in so much of its hardship so that they could say they had become aware of what that action meant in terms of pain and endurance.
However, this is at the cost of a clarity of plot and the clear identification and delineation of characters. We have a fair idea of what is happening but are not always certain. We see the characters but it is a bit hard to know who is who. We see the action, have the motivation explained to us but this is not always easy to feel dramatically. William McInnes delivers a fine laudatory tribute at the end.
In fact, the film is frequently quite gruelling to watch and it would not be surprising if many, even though wanting to watch and sympathetic to the enterprise, gave up on the experience.
It means that this version of Kokoda is most worthy but too demanding.