Movie Review: Breaker Morant

Breaker Morant, 1979, Australia. Directed by Bruce Beresford. Based upon a true story and adapted from the play of the same name by Kenneth G. Ross.

The film takes place in 1901 in Pietersburg, Transvaal, South Africa during the Boer War. Three men, Australians under British command, are court-martialed under the charges of killing Boer prisoners and a German missionary. The British army arranged a trail intended to be little more than a mock trial by assigning the defendants an inexperienced lawyer and transferring any individuals who might be of use to the defendants' cause to India. Although the actions that the Australians are charged for, killing the enemy, was proven to be common practice, the British planed to sentence the defendants to death as a showing of their impartial justice which would encourage a peace conference that would hopefully lead to the end of the war. The main setting of the movie is the courtroom where the memories/flashbacks of the accused and of the witnesses relay the truth behind the charges. Unjustly, two of the three defendants are sentenced to death.