Alert to rumors of the accidental destruction of a nearby town by an errant B52 (a snafu denied by the American military attache'), Pran bribes a Cambodian patrol boat crew and the pair heads upriver.ĭirector Roland Joffe' doesn't turn away from the horror - Schanberg and Pran discover an inferno of amputated limbs and infants who appear to have been roasted, of ruble and ruin, with the added irony that the victims turn to the reporter, as an American, for help, never realizing that Americans had done this to them. Along with a freelance photographer, Al Rockoff (John Malkovich), and the rest of the foreign press corps, they hang out in a capital where bombs explode as routinely as flashbulbs. Ngor), who becomes his interpreter, wheel greaser and general factotum. When Schanberg (Sam Waterston) arrives in Phnom Penh, he's met by Pran (Dr. "The Killing Fields" is based on an article by Sydney Schanberg, now a columnist for The New York Times, recounting his experiences as a correspondent in Cambodia from 1972 through the fall of the Lon Nol government in 1975 the article focused on the tortures incurred by Dith Pran, Schanberg's friend and liaison during those years, when he was trapped in Cambodia during the wholesale butchery and dislocation that ensued.įor the most part, "The Killing Fields" is faithful to history, departing from actual events only occasionally to enhance the narrative. But "The Killing Fields' " inherent scope and power, while daunting to its creators, also made it glitch-proof, a visually arresting epic guaranteed to capture the hearts and minds of its audience. Telling the story of an actual American journalist and his Cambodian assistant who become friends against the backdrop of the "sideshow" war in Cambodia, the movie's never quite up to its material the British writer, director and producer come as foreigners to someone else's story. Of all the movies made about America's experience in Indochina, "The Killing Fields" is the simplest and most serious and, because the truths of war tend to be simple and serious, the best.