Customer Reviews

Farewell to the King

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Farewell to the King" is a superb adaptation by John Milius ("Red Dawn" "Conan the Barbarian") of Pierre Schoendoeffer's novel. Epic in scope, beautifully photographed, scored and acted, it is Milius's most underrated film.

Milius has done a fine job of reshaping a difficult novel, to be more faithful to the story would have required a six hour movie. He is also more optimistic than the novelist in both the story's ending and in the treatment of the episode of the phantom Japanese column, but it is still a haunting, powerful film that undeservedly failed at the boxoffice. Much of the film was actually filmed on the island of Borneo, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak (formerly ruled by the White Rajahs until 1946).

This is just the type of visually and aurally appealling film that cries out for rediscovery in the DVD format, with commentary by the director and lots of bonus material.

I was stunned to see this movie is finally out on DVD format. I have waited years for this film to appear, it deserves a bigger audience. Like a previous reviewer, I have a number of war films in my collection. I rate this picture 4 and a half stars.

Nick Nolte does a solid job as a former Marine who leaves the war behind him and finds refuge with a head hunter tribe in Borneo. Through fate and circumstance, he becomes king and leader of his tribe. He takes a wife, and believes that WW II is behind him. Then the Japanese forces arrive near his domain.

His emerald forest changes, fate forces him to revert to his military tactics to save his tribe.

A British commando team discovers him and tries to get him to

fight the Japanese. Nolte will have no part in the war until it

arrives at his front door. Farewell To The King does a great job in showing the angst and sadness of joining another battle,

a man torn in two by war, frustration at not being able to control the events around you.

John Milius does a good job directing this picture. It has a similarity to a David Lean picture, not unlike Bridge On The River Kwai, or Lawrence Of Arabia. He directed previous action movies such as Red Dawn, Big Wednesday, and the first Conan feature. This movie was better than recent WW II films that came out in the last two years. Empire Of The Sun shows war through the eyes of a child. Farewell To The King shows war through the eyes of a man who has been to hell and back.

Thank you MGM for finally releasing this film, now, if only someone will release Boys In Company C, and Twilights' Last Gleaming.

This is one of my favorite flicks. The acting is right on cue, the score is beautiful and fits perfectly and the story is tight and easy to get into. Another reason I know that this is a great film is because I actually like Nolte in it. Normally his work bores me to tears. It's very hard to find, so get it while you can.
Check it out!

Excellent adventure/war film set during WWII and this one is a surprise and should be on DVD. The storyline is top notch, the acting and actors carry themselves well through some horrendous experiences. Great action scenes and plenty of gunfire and weaponry that are trademarks of the director.
Find this one if you can and enjoy with a good cigar and a couple of beers on a Saturday afternoon.

I saw this in a theater years ago and it struck me as a throwback to the WWII movies of the 40s and 50s. One could argue that the central character is an anti-hero, but in a more old-fashioned sense, he's a traditional, American GI who's fed up with the war (WWII) and just wants to go home with his hide intact. He rises to the occasion when he mobilizes the natives of a small island who have befriended him against the Japanese. This film has a bit of "His Majesty O'Keefe" about it, but it's a satisfying tale about a man who puts his self-interest aside to help people who are not his own kith and kin. This is an underrated, unsung, and undersold movie. It deserves to be re-released. If you want a good ending, this has one.

Farewell to the King should have been John Milius' masterpiece. Harking back to Joseph Conrad and the days of high adventure so beloved of the writer-director, this WW2 tale of a deserter who becomes a king in Borneo only to lose everything fighting the Japanese and betrayed by the Allies, it seemed made to measure for his brand of bravado and myth making. Even had Milius not ill-advisedly taken Spielberg's advice to trim half an hour from his original cut and the film not been released in two slightly different cuts on either side of the Atlantic, Farewell would almost certainly still have been an awkward and under-achieving film so problematic are many aspects: yet for all its many faults, there's enough there that IS unique to keep on drawing me back time and again. Part old-fashioned adventure, part folie de grandeur, all box-office disaster, it's a mess, but it's an intriguing one that's hard to dislike despite its many flaws, and Basil Poledouris' remarkable score is a thing of wonder.

The performances are variable: Nigel Havers is fine as the narrator who knows that one day he'll have to betray the King, but in a part that really calls for a Steve McQueen or a Russell Crowe, Nick Nolte has a few too many eccentric moments and isn't always able to make Milius' dialog sound as good as it reads (a common problem in many of his scripts). Frank McRae, Marius Weyers and Milius' old surfing buddy Gerry Lopez offer good support, but there's a truly terrible but mercifully brief performance from the future Mrs Milius, Elan Oberon. The film feels somewhat cramped at times due to Milius' decision not to shoot in Scope (he dislikes 2.35:1 despite doing his most visually impressive work in the ratio), although cinematographer Dean Semler pulls off an impressive sequence where a night time ambush goes horribly wrong due to a sudden shift in the weather.

It would have been interesting to see what author Pierre Schoendoerffer would have made of it had he been able to direct it himself. Like Milius an unashamed admirer of Joseph Conrad (the story is basically a WW2 reworking of Lord Jim), the French writer-director's own films, particularly the haunting Le Crabe Tambour, hint at a more melancholy, less gung-ho attack on the material. But Milius' film has enough going for it to make it worth a look.

The US cut recently released on Region 1 DVD by MGM/UA is different in quite a few ways to the European version. For a start, it's shorter, although it has some additional footage: the battle montage as the Japanese retreat is much longer (the entire battle at the river is cut from the European versions), while there's a scene of James Fox reminiscing about a girl he knew in India that is missing from the European cut, as well as a few additional lines of dialogue in some scenes. However, there is a huge and fairly important scene cut from near the end of the picture, where Fairbourne (Havers) visits the Japanese general as he has his last meal before his execution: it's not an entirely successful scene, but the film works better with it than without. There's also a big structural difference, with the US cut showing Learoyd deserting and watching his companions being executed as a pretitle sequence - this footage is in the European cut, but much more comfortably included much later when Learoyd is telling the story of how he became king. Also, the opening quote has been dropped and replaced with title cards specifying the date and location, while the closing narration is longer. On the whole, aside from the missing battle montage footage, the European version plays better.

It was too much to hope for deleted scenes or even Milius' original two-and-a-half hour cut of the film on the R1 disc, but MGM/UA could have at least included the trailer - but unfortunately the disc is completely extras free. The widescreen transfer is good, but the contrast could be better in some jungle scenes. The R2 PAL discs are fullframe without any extras, but do have the European cut of the film.

I first saw this movie in the theatre when it first came out. Something very necessary to fully enjoy it. In my opinion this is a very highly underrated film and I would recommend it to anyone. The musical score is excellent and the filming is as well. Takes you back to Kipling like adventure stories of your youth. Something very lacking in today's video game world.

This is one of those rare movies one can watch a number of times, and its always a spectacle! An American soldier, utilizing common-sense, flees the Philipines after its conquest by the Japanese forces in the early years of World War 2. In doing so, he avoids a miserable death in a concentration camp, as so many other allied POWs experienced. Instead, he finds himself amongst the indigenous people of Borneo, a culture of warriors and hunters, living as they did for thousands of years in the forests and mountains. They are a people whose hearts and minds yearn for an age of heroic deeds to equal that of their legendary ancestors. They live by the sword, spear, and axe, courage and valor in battle is the highest ideal. The soldier becomes a leader among them, uniting the clans, and lives in peace as the war rages abroad. However, near war's end, he and his new people collaborate with a special-operations team of allied SOE/OSS personnel, who train them to fight a guerrilla war against the remnants of Japanese forces on the island. As a result, the people are subjected to unspeakable atrocities and war-crimes...but the Japanese soldiers soon find they have subjugated a people who will take terrible revenge!

John Milius's is an excellent, underrated but still problematic film. Supposedly, it was somewhat cut and as available on VHS is a truncated "almost" masterpiece - a good film that could have been a great one. Here's hoping that the DVD provides some additional "lost" footage along with an informative commentary by the always interesting and loquacious Mr. Milius.

It's been more than ten year since I watch it in theaters but I still remember that they, who a war movie change my way to see this whole kind of films (maybe it was just a preview for the coming of the Terrence Malick's Masterpice The Thin Red Line).

Actually it's the first time I remember watch something with Nick Nolte who later become one of my favorite actors and here there are so many reasons, specially if you feel the poetry behind one story about the search of paradise, the friendship the need to understand the true meaning of freedom.

But there's more... beautifull scenes and the best soundtracks of Basil Poledouris made till now.

This is not a film about war it's a legend.