Film Forum

(1995) Burma, 1988: Patricia Arquette’s recently widowed tourist Laura Bowman leaves her hotel room to observe a pro-democracy demonstration fomenting in the streets – and is inspired by the courage of one of its leaders. She soon finds herself swept up in the movement and headed for the Thailand border amid a violent military government crackdown.  A unique project for Boorman – his depiction of the massacres in this film (which were not televised at the time) prompted worldwide attention to the pro-democracy movement in Burma.  Approx. 99 mins. 35mm.

Reviews

“A rare film, one that is intelligent, emotional and exciting.”
– Caryn James, The New York Times

“Exhilarating… (It) is only ninety-nine minutes long, and seems shorter; it has a purposeful, arrowlike momentum that sets it apart from ordinary, one-thing-after-another adventure movies. The action … has a seamless unity, which is largely the product of Boorman’s masterly sense of film rhythm but is also, perhaps, partly the result of his firm, unshakable confidence in the importance of this story… It’s a mysteriously graceful adventure movie: a fearless masterpiece.”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker

“A gripping thriller, with some mesmerizing nighttime sequences of a river-borne escape that recall THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER.”
– Mike Hale, The New York Times

“Arquette gives the kind of mighty physical performance usually delivered by men in existential action classics like The Wages of Fear, but she suffuses it with something all her own—she’s bulletproof yet vulnerable. And Aung Ko, a Burmese expatriate playing a character named for him, does more than complement Arquette; he arrives at a state of grace.”
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker