Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian friend Dith Pran who are responsible for covering the Cambodian conflict for The New York Times. Sidney and Pran go through brutal events to get their major story. After the American army pull-out and war stops Cambodia becomes dangerous place to Dith to stay in so Sidney offers to help him and his family to get out of Cambodia. Their plan doesn't work out and Dith is trapped in Cambodia to face his unknown destiny.
The best moments are the human ones, the conversations, the exchanges of trust, the waiting around, the sudden fear, the quick bursts of violence, the desperation.
Every scene of The Killing Fields (and every participant in its making) is in service of showing how abruptly a seemingly safe and vital individual can have everything essential stripped away.
It must be nerve-racking for the producers to offer a tale so lacking in standard melodramatic satisfactions. But the result is worth it, for this is the clearest film statement yet on how the nature of heroism has changed in this totalitarian century.
