If you think this film is shallow, you're watching it in a shallow way. It works on at least two levels at one and the same time; it's both an extravagantly gory, nasty action horror sci-fi flick, and a critique on modern American gung-ho attitudes to the rest of the world. The whole world has been federalized into a Nazi-style Union, with unmistakable Orwellian overtones; the world is divided into Citizens, who can vote, have children, get good jobs, etc., and non-citizens. At the suggestion that the bugs are attacking only in defence, having been interfered with by the Federation too many times, and that a 'live and let live' policy would save the most lives, the protagonists respond aggressively and not particularly intelligently. I won't go on; there's material for a whole thesis here... but think on - Nazi Germany and military America - are there parallels? The extremity of the suggestion is cleverly camouflaged by the macho action.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Hedd Wyn
(1992)
Sentimental in the grand old Welsh tradition
11 September 1998
My mother and I sobbed all the way through the second half of this film. To be fair, it can only be properly appreciated if you speak Welsh; the poetry loses everything in translation. It does become pretty mawkish at times but as a true Welsh woman I'm a no-holds-barred sentimentalist and I fell for it hook line and sinker.
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