Looking back at Gallipoli a couple months later, I mostly remember Mel Gibson’s early performance and the message that young men were suckers to volunteer to fight in a war where their lives were sacrificed for no good reason (in a suicide charge where their guns didn’t even have any ammunition). It was a quasi-dissident film to me.

Here, I don’t see Breaker Morant as a dissident film - but it’s a better one than Gaillipoli, which was slower and simpler. Morant is more complicated and deals with deeper themes about the nature of politics, about whether one should obey orders from above, about the morals and effectiveness of collective punishment, about the ends justifying the means, about twisting laws and railroading people, about keeping up appearances for the public’s sake. The film importantly acknowledges that the British were the bad guys of the war - an Empire trying to crush a ragtag nation of farmers fighting for their homeland - but this too makes me less sympathetic to Morant, because he was railroaded for committing his “war crimes” on behalf of the wrong side.

Overall I would give this a 7.5 or maybe 8/10. The acting was quite strong by the cast and it was well directed and well paced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaker_Morant_(film)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5695155&forum_id=2:#48753893)

They were also fighting on the wrong side.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5695155&forum_id=2:#48753897)