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Gallipoli Customer Reviews (40 - 42 of 50 Reviews)

In the trenches.
A touching drama about the futility of war and the power of male friendship. "Gallipoli" stars a young Mel Gibson as a champion runner and reluctant soldier in the World War I battle of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey. The story of his friendship with another runner (Mark Lee) and the idealistic dreams both men have of glory and adventure in the war develops into a ghastly look at the horror of a suicide mission and the waste that Australians experienced, as hundreds of their young men were slaughtered. Gibson was just another working actor at this point, not yet the megastar he is today, and he blends in with the fine ensemble cast and delivers a poignant performance, while Mark Lee steals the show as the naive boy who dreams of adventure and winds up in the horrific experience of trench warfare. A strong, emotionally wrenching war film, highly recommended.

More accurate than you think
Much has been made of an anti-British slant in this movie (see some of the reviews below).

Yes, there are anti-British sentiments in the film. But check your history. The technical adviser to the film is historian Bill Gammage. His book "The Broken Years" has the original letter used as the model for Archie's last hurried goodbye note. Gammage worked closely with script-writer David Williamson and the film is packed with actual incidents. The story IS fictional but the situations HAPPENED.

The facts are these:
* as in the film, Australian soldiers did NOT salute British officers.
* "Robinson", the officer who orders the assault to proceed - is Australian, look at his uniform!
* many accounts confirm that the British stopped to brew tea after landing unopposed at Suvla Bay.
* there is no mention of the immense British army and Royal Navy, French army and colonial Indian army casualties in the Gallipoli campaign because it's a fictional story about Frank and Archie - if the British want to make their own Gallipoli movie, they can.
* the New Zealanders also have numerous anti-British sentiments about Gallipoli. Read about the Battle of Chunuk Bair.

What this film does very well is portray, lovingly, the birth of Australia's Gallipoli myth/legend. It is replete with the stuff that Australians like to think about themselves: anti-authoritarian, mateship, take hardship without complaint, and above all else: maintain a sense of humour.

The movie was financed by Rupert Murdoch. His father, Sir Keith, was sent by the Australian Government to investigate the Gallipoli disaster. It was Keith Murdoch, as a first-hand eye witness, who complained most about the appalling generalship of the British (again, read the histories) and encouraged that the troops be withdrawn before more lives were lost.

Finally, I too am an Australian, of Australian parents, and Australian grandparents. My grandfather fought at Gallipoli.

THE crowning achievement of Australian cinema's new wave
Australia is such a young country, it hasn't had long to create those defining moments that its people can latch on to as being examples of what it means to be "Australian". The WWI disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign is that single moment. It was Australia's "baptism of fire".

And it led to the creation of the Anzac (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) legend. Remember that Australia, as a country independent of Great Britain, was only 14 years old when this battle took place.

What Peter Weir's film, coupled with a screenplay by top Australian playwright David Williamson with technical advice from historian Bill Gammage, does is capture that defining moment brilliantly. But this is not a gung-ho war blockbuster. It is a very real, very strident examination of how a single military disaster that cost thousands of lives, came to be the mould that Australians now use to cast their national character.

More than this, Gallipoli also captures, like no other Australian film, the essence of Australian "mateship" - that is: standing by your friends through thick and thin at all costs while scoffing at authority.

The first day of the Gallipoli campaign, April 25 1915, gave rise to Australia's most important national celebration and also the annual commemoration of war dead. To outsiders, it is strange how Australia and its people have used this tragic defeat to examine their national character: do they still measure up to their ancestors who stormed ashore under the Gallipoli clifftops all those years ago?

If you want to see a film that captures the spirit of an entire nation, then this is it.

NB. Rupert Murdoch helped finance this movie because his father Keith (later Sir Keith) was the war correspondent who bluntly told the Australian government that Gallipoli was doomed to fail and that the Allied troops must be withdrawn. Gallipoli was Murdoch senior's defining moment too.

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