Customer Reviews

Soldier Child

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This is a powerful film, shot mostly with handheld cameras. It can be faulted for less than sterling sound quality and camera work. Still, the subject matter is so powerful and so important that the content of the film lifts it above its technical production quality. Although filmed in 1998, the sad story of child soldiers in Uganda continues today with the same key players still pretending they seriously want to end the confict into which these children are drawn. The story in Uganda is a tragic one and if I have a fault with the substance of the story it is the absence of a larger context in which the viewer is made aware that Uganda is just one of many countries where the practice takes place. Those looking for that larger perspective will find P.W. Singer's book "Children At War" an excellent treatise on the subject.

I don't own this DVD, but rented it from an online rental company.

This is a very good DVD in terms of making you want to help these children in Uganda. There are subtitles, in the main feature, for those who have trouble understanding 'African English', but in the bonus feature about the capture of Kony's main camp there were no subtitles and the audio levels in that footage were absolutely terrible (high, low, high, low); the video quality was also pretty bad in that as well (I don't think the director actually filmed that footage, though he filmed the main feature by himself). In the main feature, the audio level was not the best at times either. I discovered at the end of the disc that it was made with a 'pro-sumer' handheld camcorder. I know from personal experience that these will give you good picture, but the sound is not always top notch. In addition, the story also seemed a little condensed or missing details at times. For example, they really didn't say much about how sucessfully these children were re-integrated into society after they were re-united with their parents. In addition, for people who don't know about Kony (he is completely nuts) and the Lord's Resistance Army, there were a lot of missing details on that front as well.