Kokoda (2006)

Sadly Over-hyped

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

KOKODA 2006 This Australian war film is about a small group of Australian soldiers during the Kokoda Track campaign of 1942. The men, part of the Australian 39th Battalion are sent deep into the mountains of New Guinea to try and stop the Japanese from reaching Port Moresby. The Japanese had landed a large force on the far side of the island, and are crossing over the Owen Stanley Range to take Port Moresby. Most of the Australian Army was fighting in North Africa, or had been lost in the fight for Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. The 39th was one of the few units available. It consisted mostly of untrained militia and soldiers considered unfit for combat. The film starts with a section of men assigned to a forward post on the Kokoda Track. Their job is to warn the main body of the troops if the Japanese show. The Japanese do show, and quickly flank the group. The survivors hot foot it into the jungle to escape. The half dozen men left now need to attempt to reach their own lines.The men quickly run out of food and fresh water. Most have malaria and are suffering from dysentery. They move on the best they can trying to avoid Japanese patrols. One by one the group is reduced from clashes with the opposing forces. One man is wounded and wanders off into the jungle to die. Another is shot up and left in an old native hut.Several days later, two of the men, starving and exhausted, manage to hook up with some Regular Australian Army units. The Regulars have just reached the area, and are having their own problems with the Japanese. Fighting in the open North African desert, is not the same as the dense humid jungle. The militiamen soon find themselves back in the fight as the Japanese launch a big attack. The attack fails, but the undermanned Aussies still need to fall back. Another of the men is killed, but the man left at the native hut has been brought in by several natives. The slow retreat continues almost to Port Moresby. The Japanese though have shot their bolt. They are now at the long end of a supply line. They are recalled back to the other side of the mountains. The long battle now continues back over the mountains in pursuit of the Japanese. The 39th though, what is left of them, are withdrawn. The cast is made up of, Ben Barrack, Simon Stone, Ewen Leslie, Christopher Baker, Travis McMahon, and Jack Finsterer, Luke Ford and Steve Le Marquand.First time feature film director, Alister Grierson, deserves full marks here. This is one nasty, brutal, war film. The cinematography by Jules O'Loughlin is simply fantastic, showing the viewer just how claustrophobic jungle warfare was. The Japanese are seldom shown except as shadows through the dense undergrowth. Most of the time they are right on top of the Aussies before they are seen. O'Loughlin was nominated for best cinematography by various Australian cinema award venues. All in all, this is a very good war film.

Further to the remarks of another reviewer, this movie is not without its flaws but, on the whole, it makes for a fantastic insight into what I try to accomplish (from an educational sense) each time I lead a trek on the Kokoda Track.As the owner of a small business specialising in treks to the Kokoda Track, I pride myself - as well as the rest of our team - on educating those that make the effort to walk such a sacred trail about the Kokoda campaign.It's difficult to display the overwhelming sensation I often see when our groups gain a slight understanding of what Australian soldiers had to endure.Let's be clear and say that this is a film, however for what it is - the movie definitely portrays life as an Australian soldier during this horrendous period and provides a small insight into what they had to endure.I applaud the film-makers for what they have achieved with this film and will be recommending it to all Getaway Trekking hikers along the Kokoda Track.Sue Fitcher Getaway Trekking - Australia http://www.getawaytrekking.com.au

Kokoda was inspired by events on the Kokoda track during WW2 when Australian militia slowed and ultimately stopped a push by 10,000 Japanese soldiers to move overland and capture Port Moresby. What they really mean is that the movie is set in this time period but is fiction and everything that happens is just a jumble of standard scenes from other war films. The first hour is just one cliché after another. Some of the scenes are simply there to be able to draw us into a feeling that this conflict was horrific beyond compare, when there appears to be little evidence of this. Both sides fought hard to control the track and no mercy was shown by either side. Both sides suffered from logistic shortages and the terrain was a great leveler in this conflict. As the Japanese got closer to Port Moresby their supply line grew and this ultimately led to their downfall. On the other hand as the Australians retreated closer to Port Moresby their supply line decreased. Some of the scenes appear to be straight out of the handbook on standard scenes to include in any war film. The film was misguided and highlighted the youth of the production team. At a time when Australia could have done with a great film about one of Australia's best moments the film Kokoda is a shallow disappointment.

Anyone who has rubbished this film has no real idea of either jungle warfare, the Kokoda retreat or the unit about whom the story is based. In fact, the only real criticism(and the reason why I only gave it 8) was due to the minimal depth of general detail because of the budgetary restrictions.I wont bother to point out individual ignorance here as most comments say more about the critic than they do about the movie. It is NOT a movie about Kokoda, but about a small part of the retreat of the 39th battalion from Kokoda to Isurava where the remnants were relieved by the 2/14th battalion AIF. The 39th was a MILITIA unit. Not regulars. It was made up of conscripts, was poorly trained(compared to AIF units) and was virtually shanghai'd to New Guinea. None of the troops had any military experience, let alone jungle warfare experience and most had never seen a jungle before. Yet this battalion held up the advance of between 3x and 9x their number(varied depending upon the place) of Japanese veteran troops who at that time were the undefeated and undisputed masters of jungle warfare(In fact it was the Australians at Milne Bay who gave the Japanese army its first defeat in WW2 about two weeks later, not the Americans at Guadalcanal).I have had quite a large amount of experience with terrain like this and was always grateful that no one was shooting at me at the time. You have to experience mud to your neck to believe it possible and you must also realise that along the Kokoda trail it was hot and wet during the day and freezing cold and wet during the night and virtually every soldier had malaria and dysentery. The individuals in the movie portrayed quite accurately how some of the 39th behaved as well as their fates. The comment that this was a "horror movie" was a total understatement as ALL Australians captured along the Kokoda trail by the Japanese were used for bayonet practice and the discovery of their mutilated corpses there as well as those left behind by the Japanese at Milne Bay made the taking of Japanese prisoners a very rare event. Naturally the (mostly unseen in the movie as it was in real jungle warfare) Japanese also had disease and climatic problems in their advance but having had a relative who died as a Japanese POW I find it hard to be sympathetic towards them. One detail which was poorly understood by many who saw the movie, was that upon reaching Isurava the 39th was relieved by the 2/14th and gave up all of the "tommy" guns and Bren guns to that battalion. As they were starting to return to Port Moresby along the track the remnants of the battalion (~140 out of >500), all ill and with up to 30% weight loss. heard the huge outpouring of fire behind them as the Japanese threw a whole regiment at the 2/14th. Without a murmur or an order, the whole 39th turned around and with rifles only rejoined the fray and arrived at a crucial period.I do hope that one day someone will do a large budget movie on the retreat of the whole 39th along the trail. They deserve it. this movie is accurate but shows only a small fragment of their story.