Amazon.co.uk Review
An outstanding drama, Gallipoli resonates with sadness long after you have seen it. Set during World War I, this brutally honest antiwar movie was cowritten by director Peter Weir. Mark Lee and a sinfully handsome Mel Gibson are young, idealistic best friends who put aside their hopes and dreams when they join the war effort. This character study follows them as they enlist and are sent to Gallipoli to fight the Turks. The first half of the film is devoted to their lives and their strong friendship. The second half details the doomed war efforts of the Aussies, who are no match for the powerful and aggressive Turkish army. Because the script pulls us into their lives and forces us to care for these young men, we are devastated by their fate. --Rochelle O'Gorman.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Gallipoli is well worth seeing for a number of good reasons. As a war movie, it ranks alongside the best of the genre: affecting without being sentimental, brutal without being gratuitous, and blessed with a credible, human screenplay by David Williamson. As an historical introduction to the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, it isn't bad--the odd liberties taken with the facts, while annoying (especially, one imagines, if you have ancestors among the 30,000 British troops buried on the peninsula) are just about forgivable. And as an explanation and distillation of the Gallipoli legend that looms so large in the Australian consciousness, it is unbeatable not least because the film itself did so much to fuel it. It is no coincidence that the numbers of Australians at the April 25th dawn service at Gallipoli have been increasing every year since the film was released in 1981. Mel Gibson and Mark Lee play two young sprinters who join in the army in search of adventure iconic representatives of the generation of young men that the newly federated Australia pitched into the slaughter of World War I. While Gallipoli does not shirk from the reality they discover, nor does it quite allow the characters' enthusiasm for the enterprise ever to diminish, all of which helps make the climactic scenes, based on the suicidal assault enacted of the Australian Light Horse at The Nek on August 7th, 1915, among the most moving in modern cinema.
On the DVD: The disc is in anamorphic widescreen, and can be heard in either English or German; many more languages are available as subtitles. The two special features included are the cinema trailer for the film, which should serve thoroughly to enrage any Australian viewers with both its delivery (in an American accent) and patronising sales pitch ("From a place you've never heard of . . . comes a story you'll never forget".) There is also a brief interview with director Peter Weir, which yields a few faintly interesting reminiscences about the film's gestation, but fails completely to ask him any of the many questions about the Anzac legend, jingoism, and the relationship between historical truth and cinematic art, raised by the film. --Andrew Mueller
Login![Gallipoli [1981]](https://i9.lisimg.com/image/products/280/B000059H5G/dvds/B000059H5G.jpg "Gallipoli [1981]")
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