Before watching the film i´ve heard many gruesome things about this movie. Automatically you are developing a high expectation attitude in the often recommended gore scenes. Most watchers gave high points concerning the gore and splatter effects. OK they are almost very authentically, but for e.g. the scene with the young boy, which internal organs to be taken is the pathologists daily routine. The cats scene loses at terribleness, if you can give faith to the words of the director in its interview. The only criticism point which could annoy the "society for the prevention of cruelty to animals", are the pictures with the burning rats. I think they are real. But that is an additional cinematic printout to underline the panic of the soldiers during the destruction of evidence. The cruelty to animals are at a higher senseless point in the old "Lassie", "Flipper" or "Daktari" series. No, folks: which lets the film keep lastingly in the head, is the "quiet" brutality, the matter of course of the pictures, the brute speaking (there is one scene, in which one of the leaders is badly confronted with the Camp Commander, because he shot a majority of the prisoners while fleeing instead of catching them alive. He actually did thereby a large favour to them. They would have been killed anyway, but under other circumstances). The actors are actually quite good, especially the Camp Commander could quite act in a Chacky Chan movie. Sometimes the film has also "feeling" (at the end: live is taken (Dead) and given (Birth) in one second). But the dark parts predominate and its no film to watch for fun. The film stays in head, but rather by the certainty that these cruelties really occurred, than the gore. And the certainty to determine, to which humans are able. Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic and friends were not the only butchers.
Review of Man Behind the Sun
