Review of Kokoda: 39th Battalion

The Kokoda Track is firmly entrenched in the history of World War 2 from an Australian perspective and I personally was hoping that I would leave the cinema as affected as I was by the Peter Weir film Gallipoli made 25 years earlier. Sadly, I wasn't. The battle scenes in the jungle were certainly well staged and the conditions portrayed that the 'chocolate' soldiers experienced were no doubt very close to the dreadful nature of the terrain and the ruthlessness of the enemy was evident in a rather confronting way. But unfortunately where the film fell down for me was the lack of character development of the soldiers, particularly in the early part of the film where I think an opportunity was lost to establish the 'greeness' of these inexperienced soldiers and how they came to be in the situation they found themselves. There is no doubting the importance of this chapter in World War 2 and the ultimate halting of the Japanese advance towards Port Moresby was a crucial time in the Pacific campaign. A cast of relatively unknown actors were adequate but I was not as emotionally involved with the characters as I would have liked to be. Maybe this subject needs to be re-visited in a few years with hopefully a more satisfactory result.