One Paragraph Movie Review: Gallipoli

One hundred and sixty-eighth film: Gallipoli, a very good movie about war which, like most very good movies about war, is full of handsome blokes being blokey with a few guns mixed in, and with a little bit of a hopeless and depressing ending. Every detail has been carefully considered down to cigarette tins, hats and tan lines, and you can feel the quality of dust under your nails change from Kimberly red to Turkish pale as the characters move from knockabout local enlistees to terrified cliff-soldiers overseas. It feels icky thinking young Mel Gibson is hot and likeable, but even he probably didn’t know he’d turn into a narcissistic bore, so it just comes off as charm. Also war is stupid. It’s really stupid. Four and a half steel springs out of five.