Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?

Powerful in spots and overwrought in others, Mr. Nelson sits uneasily between two genres, the war-sploitation flick and the on-the-nose afterschool special, never quite managing to reconcile one with the other.

[Its] artificial texture works on rare occasion, but finds itself infecting the movie’s drama, which ends up awkward at best, and at worst, cacophonous and redundant.

It is rare to come across a film -- especially in a major festival’s competition lineup -- in which not only does so little work, it is given such endless acreage in which to keep not working.

Tsukamoto doesn’t hold back, refusing to present us with yet another sanitized, romanticized portrayal of war [...]. Lets the director’s anti-war message come through in unmistakable, potent fashion.