Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?

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Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?

2026

1h 56m

Drama

War

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8 Reviews

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Allen Nelson was born into a poor family in New York and joined the Marine Corps at the age of 18 to escape discrimination and poverty. After serving at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was sent to the front lines of the Vietnam War in 1966, believing he could become a proud soldier like war heroes seen in the movies. But what awaited him there was not glory. On the grounds that Viet Cong had infiltrated villages, people of all ages were treated as suspects and killed one after another. It was a terrifying and gruesome reality in which he was forced to kill. As Allen accumulated experiences of taking lives, his mind gradually became desensitized. When he returned home at the age of 23, what awaited him were agonizing days and sleepless nights spent haunted by memories of the battlefield. Terrified by loud noises and the dark, his relationships with his family fell apart, and he eventually became homeless. The only thread keeping him connected to the world was Dr. Daniels, a psychiatrist working at a veterans' hospital who provided him with counseling and support.

Jordan Mintzer

The Hollywood Reporter

17h

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.

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Siddhant Adlakha

IndieWire

1d

D+

[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.

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Jessica Kiang

Variety

1d

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.

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James Mottram

South China Morning Post

1d

4/5

Powered by a terrific, haunting performance from Hicks ... the film is a striking but never sentimental psychological portrait from Tsukamoto.

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Nicholas Bell

IONCINEMA.com

2d

3/5

There’s a much more evident human touch with Tsukamoto’s latest film, although the narrative is arguably grinding the hell out of its gears to include it, which sometimes lends a sense of maudlin histrionics.

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Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Director

Rodney Hicks

Allen Nelson

Geoffrey Rush

Dr. Daniels

Lily Franky

Kuroi

Tatyana Ali

Linda

Mark Merphy

Young Nelson

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Synopsis

Allen Nelson was born into a poor family in New York and joined the Marine Corps at the age of 18 to escape discrimination and poverty. After serving at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was sent to the front lines of the Vietnam War in 1966, believing he could become a proud soldier like war heroes seen in the movies. But what awaited him there was not glory. On the grounds that Viet Cong had infiltrated villages, people of all ages were treated as suspects and killed one after another. It was a terrifying and gruesome reality in which he was forced to kill. As Allen accumulated experiences of taking lives, his mind gradually became desensitized. When he returned home at the age of 23, what awaited him were agonizing days and sleepless nights spent haunted by memories of the battlefield. Terrified by loud noises and the dark, his relationships with his family fell apart, and he eventually became homeless. The only thread keeping him connected to the world was Dr. Daniels, a psychiatrist working at a veterans' hospital who provided him with counseling and support.

Director: Shin'ya Tsukamoto
Producer: Christopher Frey, Ken Ochiai, Yumiko Takebe, Philippa Frey
Screenwriter: Shin'ya Tsukamoto
Production Co: Kino Films
Genre: Drama, War
Original Language: English
Runtime: 1h 56m

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