A Brilliant Conflict

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Certainly the Filipino fighters and civilians were heroic all throughout World War Two. Japan pulled all the food it could find from the country leading to mass starvation that killed many times more civilians than the battles of Luzon and Battle of Manila. Japana raided the country for "comfort women" and mass murdered hundreds of thousands directly. It is perfectly appropriate to highlight their struggles.Unfortunately there is a lot of total misinformation in this film that we now know from Japanese's archives and also from US code intercepts is completely wrong.In the scene with the US brass stating the Japanese were not going to let the civilian's go, the Filipino colonel says "this is complete conjecture." In fact the US brass and SCAP (Supreme commanded Allied Powers) McArthur already knew, and the archives and full now confirm, that the Japanese Naval command (and the two hardened divisions in the city were Japanese's Marines) intended to have all the civilians die.Also completely missing for the film is the fact that US forces entered without bombing and artillery support, and suffered hugely increased US casualties, because the US had decided against using artillery even against fortified Japanese's positions in the city. It was only after three days of trying, and suffering more and more US deaths, that artillery was used.In fact the only time the US attempted to negotiate with Japanese's forces during all of World War Two was in this battle in the Philippines to reduce civilian casualties.