For a movie whose central storyline takes place during one of the most horrific genocides of the last century, director Angelina Jolie's latest work about the Cambodian revolution manages to come across as more polished and less mawkish than her previous efforts (In the Land of Blood and Honey, Unbroken) that explored war-torn places outside of her native US. The atrocities committed by Khmer Rouge mostly take place off screen in First they killed my father, and the result is a polished look at a nightmarish four years for the victims and survivors of said slaughter, reminiscent of Life is Beautiful's bloodless holocaust (missing here, however is the irresistible charm of Roberto Benigni).
The heroine at the center of Jolie's film is a young girl, Luong Ung (played by newcomer Sareum Srey Moch), and as her family is taken from their homes along with countless Phnom Penh residents, she is first forced into a labor camp, then eventually trained as a child soldier for the new regime. The movie, at over 130 minutes, is definitely too long, and adds few meaningful elements to a genre that has already explored similar subject to better effect (The girl who spelled freedom, The Killing Fields). In fact, even the title is misleading: the heroine's doomed patriarch doesn't meet his demise until over an hour into the movie, and several scenes run for way too long, but I digress. Since this is an improvement over Jolie's last several directorial efforts, that certainly is worth some commendation, despite the film's several pacing and content-based flaws.
B-
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