The Human Condition II
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Year Released: 1959
Rating: 3.0
Part two of Kobayashi's over-rated but good saga of a Good Man in the Face of Corruption takes Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai) to boot camp, where he tries to stand up against the officers who abuse their soldiers (and abuse is all too common). The sequence with the weak, pathetic Obara character was lifted by Kubrick and Michael Herr for Full Metal Jacket, and it's pretty powerful here, but the problems with the first installment of the trilogy are still there: it's a tad drawn-out and the continuous punishment Kaji endures becomes tedious: how this Christ-like figure doesn't crack is beyond me.
