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Reviews
Shooting Dogs (2005)
Disappointing star of the show
John Hirt was not at all convincing in the role of Christopher, the Catholic priest; I got the distinct impression he was either too hot or bored to make a real effort. Otherwise the film was way ahead of 'Hotel Rwanda' which someone quite rightly said was too Americanised both in terms of plot and implementation, i.e. sanitised. Yes, why the makers had to make such an elementary mistake like giving the Belgian captain the insignia of a sergeant is quite beyond me. Small wonder the captain, Dominique Horwitz, also looked a touch cheesed off at times! Sadly, although a very effective vehicle for putting over the horrors of the Rwandan genocide at the time, I doubt very much 'Shooting Dogs'will make the very slightest difference to the plight of all sub-Saharan peoples currently exploited for their natural resources by the First World countries of both East and West.
Torpedo Run (1958)
As good as it gets under water in the 1950's
Production rivals around that time would have to include 'Run Silent, Run Deep' and 'Submarine Seahawk', both of which took place in the Pacific war theatre. Torpedo Run measures up well next to them. Most of it seemed pretty authentic except for the glaring omission of anti-aircraft guns on the boat's conning tower structure. Obviously these had been removed previously for security reasons. And what was Englishman, Robert Hardy, doing there as a Royal Navy Lieutenant? I suspect his only raison d'etre, based on his experiences in the European theatre, was to offer the captain a way out of the minefield by firing a torpedo into the mines, thereby leaving the lurking Japanese anti-submarine vessels with the thought that his boat had hit one of them.