Breaker Morant (1980)
“Shoot straight, you bastards. Don't make a mess of it!”
Complex. Controversial. Challenging.
War puts good men and women in unimaginable positions. Choices are forced, character challenged, and loyalties tested. Breaker Morant is a study in miniature of war and the people who fight it.
Based off a play by Kenneth Ross and the real life trial of three Australian lieutenants, it is set in the closing months of the Second Boer War (1899-1902).
A full history of the war is beyond this humble movie blog, but the Boer War was a hard, irregular contest fought between British & allied troops (including Australians) and local, largely Dutch, settlers in southern Africa.
The conflict was recognized by many as a departure from what was then thought of as “honorable” war, introducing later twentieth century mainstays such as concentration camps and an organized, civilian insurgency.
The film focuses on the trial of Lieutenants Harry Morant (Edward Woodard, who channels his Michael Caine through the movie - and looks a bit like him), Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown - Australia) and George Whitten (Lewis Fitz-Gerald - Pitch Black), who are charged with killing a Boer prisoner and a local missionary.
The facts of the case are revealed in a series of well-done flashbacks, and there is little doubt about what really happens before the trial. What is less clear is whether Morant and his men’s actions were morally justified - and whether the British Empire was itself justified in trying them.
This uncertainty is what makes Breaker Morant such a good - and painful - film.
Morant and his men are imminently likable and supremely sympathetic: normal, decent men drawn into an immoral war. And their opponent - the British establishment - is suitably villainous in its hypocrisy and willingness to sacrifice its men as pawns in a political game.
For all that, their defense, delivered powerfully by their military lawyer, Major Thomas (Jack Thompson - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), is straight out of the Nuremberg Trials (“We were only following orders”) and Thomas’ final defense could have come from the Mai Lai Massacre court martial (with a little A Few Good Men tossed in): “Soldiers at war are not to be judged by civilian rule!”
Who is right? Who is wrong?
How you answer probably has more to do with what you believe personally than what you saw on the screen in this movie. The painful magic of Breaker Morant is in its ability to bring those beliefs to the surface and make us confront them.
You can confront Breaker Morant HERE.
Four out of Five Stars.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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