After seeing the short clip in class from the movie “The Killing Fields” I had to see the rest. I’m a fan of the star actor, Sam Waterston, who plays one of the attorneys on the TV show Law and Order. I had never seen him in anything else and the movie would most definitely be powerful. I had no idea just how powerful it would actually be.

It started with the first explosion in the very beginning of the film, when the motorcyclist rides by. Suddenly there are screams and dead bodies line the streets. This was only a glimpse into the violence and hostility to come. When they visit the bombed out city I could hardly believe the realistic portrayal of the terrible incident. The scenes are filled with all kinds of gruesome images: the distraught people wandering around, small children crying in the streets, dead bodies of both people and animals, all showing how unforgiving war can really be.

As the movie goes on the evacuation of Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge is also vividly depicted by the director, Roland Joffe. When the soldiers come blazing into town waving the white flags and cheering it looked very much like what I had imagined when we were reading “First They Killed My Father”. There were all the citizens cheering them on, unaware of the soldiers’ evil intentions. Then there’s the mass evacuation. Seeing all those people fleeing the city really paints a painful picture. Knowing all these people will either die on the way to or in forced labor camps.

Going on to the later part of the film where Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor) is in the forced labor camp, it showed the grim circumstances these people faced. I can’t imagine trying to survive in such a constantly hostile environment. The daily hardships would most definitely break me and I would most likely not be able to take it. Put in a similar situation I would probably consider just giving up and actually taking my own life. I hate to say it, but the situation gets as bad as it can for the Dith Pran character. Eventually Dith escapes from the camp and begins his journey to get back together with his family. In the end when Dith sees Sydney and they hug, I have to admit I shed a tear of relief that the movie was going to have a happy ending. It was a great movie I’d recommend to anyone.