Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A Brilliant Conflict

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The character of Joe Harman was based on an Australian soldier who was a POW held by the Japanese and slaved on the infamous Burma-Thailand railroad project along the Kwai river. James "Ringer" Edwards was in fact crucified and left to die by the Japanese for the offense of scrounging food for his fellow prisoners. After some days, still alive, he was taken down, and lived to see the end of the war. He returned to Australia and married a nurse he met in a Queensland hospital in 1947. They eventually settled in Western Australia near Mount Edgar where Edwards purchased a cattle station.The Australian writer Nevil Shute was made aware of Edwards by a British officer who had known Edwards, and who advised Shute to contact the veteran to talk to him about his wartime experiences. The two men became friends, and just prior to the Australian publication of "A Town Like Alice" Shute sent Edwards a first edition inscribed "With thanks for so much information which made this book possible, and apologies for mistakes in it . . .." Shute in turn put the author Hammond Innes in touch with Ringer Edwards and that author's visits to the cattle station at Mount Edgar formed a background for Innes' 1973 novel "The Golden Soak." Edwards died in 2001. Much of the information here is drawn from a report in a March 2002 publication by the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach, Queensland (see www.outbackheritage.com.au) and generously provided to me by the staff of the organization. However, on a personal note, I first became aware of the story of Ringer Edwards from my wife, Helen, who as an adventurous young American in 1969 spent some months working on the Edwards cattle station there in the Outback.She saw the nail scars on Ringer Edwards' hands.

I cannot believe it has been 25 yrs since I first watched this story on TV. I remembered to have been very much touched by it and was lucky to get the VHS tape several years ago. I did not watch it again until just recently. I have been watched it over and over ever since. I must have watched it 10 times in the past 2 wks.The acting is superb, the story is compelling, and I am embarrassed to say that I did not appreciate actor Bryan Brown's talent until now. The playful facial expressions shown in the first half - when he gave Jean the stolen medicine in Malaya is such a contrast to his very reserved and nervous body languages shown in the second half: in their first drink together in Caines and the touring of the homestead. We have to wait until the wedding reception, especially the final dance scene to see his open display of affection for Jean. The same dancing eyes that first revealed his admiration in Malaya. Who wouldn't want to be his Mrs. Boong ? While Joe changed from a cocky, almost bigger than life figure in the Malaya jungle to a somewhat self-conscious average Joe in his own backyard, Jean took the opposite road; her wartime experience seems to have given her new confidence. She wasted no time and went after what she wanted. She took steps to take what she could get - exactly as Joe had told her to once upon a time.For me, all these transformations helps to show this is more than just a love story - this is a story about growth, courage and fragility in life. The solicitor -Noel is both a sweet and sad figure. He too gave much to Jean - he gave his last hope for love. At the end, he did what true love requires -- he put her happiness ahead of his own.I happened to like the fight between Joe & Jean that was not in the book. I thought it's an appropriate and necessary addition for it helped to surface the inner struggles they both had to deal with in order to make their life together possible.Now, I am older, maybe I understand life, love and loss a little better. This story touches me even deeper. I am, however, surprised to see B. Brown has blue eyes in the promo photo shown on this site. He most definitely did not in "A Town like Alice." Well, 25 yrs is a long time !

Henry Crawford and David Stevens' 1981 acclaimed mini-series improves on Jack Lee's 1956 studio shot film with nearly triple the amount of time given to more fully explore Nevil Shute's novel. Russel Boyd's photography (from Picnic at Hanging Rock to the newly released Master and Commander) as ever pays due respect to the exotic locations and the lush vegetation of Kuala Lumpur and the unrelenting landscape of Queensland. Paralleling closely with the `Tenko' TV series about a band of expatriate women taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1941 in Singapore this production was, not surprisingly, released in the same year. The saga's issues are further explored in the later Australian mini-series based on Noel Barber's tale of multi-cultural love in `Tanamera – Lion of Singapore' (1988); Bruce Beresford's version of a Sumatran war-prison's female choir in `Paradise Road' (1999); and ABC's contentious `Changi' (2001) – the musical (as envisioned by writer John Doyle and director Kate Woods), following the fortunes of six friends in the Singapore POW camp.In 1948 a young English woman receives an inheritance enabling her to repay a debt to the Malayan village where she survived her war years as a prisoner. Having dealt with the formal setting up of a trust fund for Jean Paget (Helen Morse) and the budding cross-generation friendship with her solicitor Noel Strachan (Gordon Jackson in typically kindly fatherly mode though without the edge of his sterner creations as Mr Hudson of `Upstairs, Downstairs' and governor George Cowley in `The Professionals') the film switches back to events in 1941 as the Japanese invade Malaya. A band of women are forced to march on the pretext of catching a train to Singapore for the nearest prison, though it soon becomes apparent that the motley captives are a very unwelcome nuisance for the Japanese. The rigours of the journey are too much for some of the women and children, and lacking any medication dysentery takes its toll on the rest. Their saviour eventually turns up in the guise of an Australian mechanic, Joe Harman (Bryan Brown), who purloins medicines and food for them and soon an obvious attraction and deep bond is formed between him and Jean. However Joe's kindness and risk taking eventually goes too far and delivers him into the vengeful hands of the camp commandant for stealing his chickens. A bloody retribution is exacted on Joe who is literally crucified in front of the women he sought to help, a thoroughly believable example, and not without precedent, of the atrocities inflicted on prisoners in this barbaric world. Mrs Frith (Dorothy Alison), whose mind is severely strained by the trauma, rather labours the corollary of a saviour who heals with medicines but is crucified for his pains. Echoes of the Canadian sergeant crucified by German soldiers around Easter in April 1915 resonate here, as well as the fictional storyline of a Russian style crucifixion in an episode of this year's `Spooks' for the BBC. November 2002 also provided further humanitarian outrages as a Catholic car thief in Belfast was nailed to a fence and beaten, and an angry Cambodian mother in Phnom Penh nailed her 13-year-old daughter's foot to the bamboo floor of their home because she had neglected her household chores.Without further ceremony the women are dismissed along with an elderly guard for minder, who expires soon after the women have sought shelter in a village, that is to become their resting place for the remainder of the war and the reason for Jean's eventual return. During her revisit to Malaya, Jean ecstatically discovers that for the want of a cold beer Joe miraculously cheated death, and impetuously she sets off for Australia in search of his cattle station. In one of life's extraordinary twists Joe turns up at Strachan's office in London who gently tries to put him off the trail; however these star-crossed lovers are destined to meet up with each other in spite of the interference by well-wishers. In the interim Jean discovers her mission to build a town like Alice Springs in the dusty backwater of Willstown that passes as the closest thing to civilisation and her lover's home. With her mixture of determination and quiet strength Jean battles to overcome the mistrust and apathy of the locals as well as theirs and Joe's inherent chauvinism. Continued in Part II

I first saw the series on Msterpiece Theater on PBS in weekly hourly installments tgat went for about 14 or 15 weeks in the 70's. If there was a movie from that, that's too bad because the entire series had to be viewed in its entirety with the detail that 14 or 15 hors of plot give. The theatrical movie version that was done in the 50's with Peter Finch doesn't do justice to the story. The plot divided into two parts...1)the World War II agony of the trek through the jungle and stay in a prisoner of war camp and 2) the relationship that develops in the Outback of Australia. One of the most vibrant scenes I recall was the character Paget being elated that Harmon was, in fact alive, skipping and jumping for joy down the beach after having thought he died years previously. Wonderfully filmed throughout the series.