grantss Good, but not great. Interesting story of survival, but it's not that original. There had been numerous WW2 POW / survival-through-unbearable-hardship movies before this, and this isn't that different from those. Plus, writer-director Bruce Beresford pulls his punches with regard to Japanese atrocities in WW2 - the reality was a lot worse than the movie makes out. Emotional and interesting nevertheless.Good cast - Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett, Julianna Margulies, among others - and they all give solid performances.

SnoopyStyle It's 1942 Singapore. Adrienne Pargiter (Glenn Close) joins the women and children evacuating from the approaching Japanese only to have their ship sunk. She and others swim ashore to Sumatra and imprisoned in an internment camp. As they face mounting brutal treatment, they decide to organize a choir.There are a lot of great actresses here; Frances McDormand, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Julianna Margulies plus many many others. The different characters can get to be too numerous. However the main characters played by the better known actresses remain center stage. Ten years before, the stories would be shocking and ground breaking. After Schindler's List, that kind of inhumanity is no longer as shocking and it seemed that this movie held back the most shocking visuals. For example, when the woman gets burnt alive, we are barely allowed to see anything. The beatings were all stage crafted. They could have stage a more brutal vision.

joeestlinbm If I was going to describe this movie in one word, the word would be atrocities.I think men who are assigned to the seeing after of POW's, especially female POW's, are particularly inept, and not good for much else, and probably realizing this, and being angry about it, are experts through their anger, in the field of designing, and applying atrocities.The courage, and resourcefulness, of these ladies was impeccable. Even when faced with what seemed to be the most dire of circumstances, they were able to maintain their digninty.The music they created through the expertise of Glenn Close's character, was unique to say the least, and also enjoyed by their keepers, I believe to such an extent, that they were spared at least some of the indignities they would have had to suffered.I've watched this movie several times, and although there are a few places where it seems to get a little slow, it is still a very enjoyable film, because these slow places are essential to the movie as a whole.I couldn't write this without mentioning Frances McDormand. She is so versatile, and in this movie, she proves once again, that there's nothing she can't do!

bewlis This movie is one of the very few made about female POWs of the Japanese in the Second World War. I feel that this subject has been hugely neglected by war historians in general and is a story that deserved to be told. Here there is no machismo, just the story of women enduring in the face of intolerable suffering and brutality. The acting is absolutely flawless and unlike some critics I do not think the story drags at some points. The wonderful opening sequence accompanied by the Elgar Concerto is riveting and exciting, and although some parts of this film are historically inaccurate, this pales into nothing compared to the wonderful sense of time, place and adversity.