Yep, I gotta say that I was a little disappointed with this one seeing as how I enjoyed the book so much. I'm not suggesting that they should have changed the real story in order to make this film more entertaining but an awful lot of the movie drags on.

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The story behind this is a truly terrible one: Loung Ung is a Cambodian 7 year old who has a life that a child in a happy family would have and this is all ripped to pieces when the Khmer Rouge violently took over the country. Because Loung's father worked for the government, it is important that their identities remain secret. We watch as this affluent family gradually loses everything, and then they are even separated from one-another.

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Food is scarce in the camps as most of what they grow is actually reserved for the Khmer soldiers - the desperate nature of this is portrayed much better in the book because I don't think they did a very good job of showing that the people in the labor camps had to work hard and long hours and received very little in the way of anything to eat. Stealing food from the fields was common, and severe punishments were passed on to anyone caught doing this.

Loung discovers by accident as she is "drafted" to be a child soldier due to her intelligence, that those in military roles receive better treatment and more food than the laborers - and later realizes that allowing yourself to become indoctrinated and hate the enemy, she gets some level of freedom also. She is trained in combat and how to wire up mines despite the fact that she is only 7 or 8 years old.

I said the movie was a bit boring but perhaps I say that because I already am quite familiar with the story, so if you haven't read the book I think you will feel very differently. You definitely should see this as it is an important and very tragic part of history that i think many times the world tries to pretend it didn't happen

It is particularly sad that the world was very aware of what was going on over here and for the most part did nothing to intervene. That's the true tragedy. This movie isn't perfect, but i got misty-eyed multiple times and I like it when that happens to me during a film. Like most of what I post, it is available on Netflix.