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We all know war is hell. But does it have to be hell on good filmmaking, too? Based on real events that unfolded during World War II, The Great Raid takes the audience deep into the detailed heart of a rescue mission, extracting some 500 allied soldiers from a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. Heroic though it may have been, telling the audience they're watching heroes is a very different thing than stirring emotions and ratcheting up suspense. Benjamin Bratt stars as the colonel leading green troops on the dangerous mission. His performance, along with the rest of the cast (including Joseph Fiennes and James Franco) is serviceable. Yet it's an unexciting misfire--as is the script and direction. The movie looks good and gets the period details right, sure. But this long, laborious effort at retro-heroism is dramatically flat. Only the most forgiving of patriots will want to enlist. more...
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C+
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War often presents us with horrible choices: Fall asleep in the theater or fall asleep to the History Channel? That's the question posed by The Great Raid, a WWII movie so parched, so Reader's Digest expository, so utterly expressionless, it confuses taciturn Greatest Generation nobility with paralysis. Raid, conceived in the wake of Sept. 11 and shelved for two years, looks like a historical reenactment staged by animatronic Boy Scouts. It's the true tale of a daring mission to retrieve U.S. prisoners of war from a Japanese death camp in the Philippines, but director John Dahl, in his pacing, seems more intent on evoking the Bataan Death March. How did the nimble indie moralist of Red Rock West find himself in this quagmire? Raid, arcing brass fanfares aside, is no kin to Saving Private Ryan, or even The Big Red One. No, Dahl has decolorized The Green Berets. more...
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N/A
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