Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Leofwine_draca Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence is, as the title would suggest, about as far from your typical old-fashioned prisoner-of-war movie as it can get. This film is about Allied officers in a Japanese prison but instead of being about escape attempts, as so many films in this genre are, it's instead a treatise on the human condition that explores the nature of warfare and the human spirit in its fight for justice and honour. The film I would most liken it to is HELL IN THE PACIFIC.Essentially this is a film about four men whose lives intertwine as the sometimes shocking events in the camp play out. Tom Conti is the straight man through whom we experience the film; he's good, but he has his thunder stolen by the others. Ryuichi Sakamoto has the toughest role as the camp commander driven by old-fashioned ideals and conflicted by personal desire; he also contributed the film's unusual, effective score. David Bowie is the headlining character and makes his role charming with seeming effortlessness. Best of the bunch is the great Japanese Yakuza actor 'Beat' Takeshi, playing an unusual and ambiguous character; he gets the final scene to himself, which just so happens to be the film's most moving moment.

tavm When David Bowie died earlier this month, I decided to immediately order this from Netflix. My mom ended up watching this with me though she missed some sequences as we were eating dinner during it. She found it depressing. Well, it is as it depicts a prisoner-of-war camp in Indonesia during World War II. Bowie plays a British soldier who gets sent there and he seems to have an effect on the commandant there. By the way, he's not the Mr. Lawrence of the title, that's Tom Conti as the British colonel who knows the language of the Japanese officers there. I'll admit right off the bat that some sequences confused me like the ones of a flashback of Bowie's life before the war concerning his little brother. Had I not read some of the synopsis on Wikipedia, I would have been completely in the dark about that one. Still, this was a mostly compelling drama of the brutality of that time and place. So on that note, I say give Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence a look.

edumacated I'll just start out by saying that David bowie was a joke in his role. in a pow situation, he pantomimed shaving while having no evidence of any beard, and all the while wearing a kilo of product in his hair. his uniform, after months in the jungle only showed stone wash wear. bowie was a wooden joke who didn't want to ruin his bi-primped, rock and roll image, and i wish they had never cast him.and the main reason is: this film sports a majority Japanese production team; this along with an authentic story, gives us a real insight into the wwII Japanese psyche--something often ignored in the post-wwII Hollywood movies. the American public was after justification for the bomb, and retribution for their dead.and for the latter, this is an important film. it was made in 1983, and many jap vets were still living, and for a Japanese production team to coagulate such a homogeneous film is quite amazing.watch it and blow off bowie. he no longer holds the cultural sway he did back then. it will no longer be a rock and roll sacrilege.

Quick_Draw_Kiddo I had a really hard time looking past the raw 80's of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. I have to be honest and say I found it a little boring, maybe I missed something, but the story seemed bland and slow. I know all films don't have to have a lot of action, but I didn't feel much of a conflict and nothing happened to make me care for any character. There's also the strange flashback that confused me more. I couldn't really figure out what the relevance of it was, that he's not saint? It just didn't seem to have anything to do with Bowie's character. Besides my indifference with the film I really thought David Bowie and the rest of the cast delivered great performances.