The real-life story of a friendship between two journalists, an American and a Cambodian, during the bloody Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in 1975, which led to the death of 2-3 million Cambodians during the next four years, until Pol Pot's regime was toppled by the intervening Vietnamese in 1979.
The best moments are the human ones, the conversations, the exchanges of trust, the waiting around, the sudden fear, the quick bursts of violence, the desperation.
– Roger Ebert,
Chicago Sun-Times,
23 Oct 2004
fresh:
The film's overall thrust - angry, intelligent, compassionate -- makes this producer Puttnam's finest movie to date.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
rotten:
The intent and outward trappings are all impressively in place, but at its heart there's something missing.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
9 Apr 2008
rotten:
The screen is swamped by a bathetic, self-preening sententiousness.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
9 Apr 2008
fresh:
It must be nerve-racking for the producers to offer a tale so lacking in standard melodramatic satisfactions. But the result is worth it, for this is the clearest film statement yet on how the nature of heroism has changed in this totalitarian century.