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Rating:  -
As American forces began to retake the Philippines during WWII, the Japanese began killing the POWs they had captured. Determined not to let this happen to the 511 soldiers held at Cabanatuan, Lt. Colonel Mucci and Capt. Prince devised a daring plan to sneak in ahead of the advancing troops and rescue the POWs. Based on the true story as detailed in the book "Ghost Soldiers," it's an exciting and heart-breaking tale. And while it's been a couple of years since I read the book, it seemed that the movie followed rather closely to the true story, although I don't remember the "love story" between POW Major Gibson and the civilian Margaret in Manila.
Overall, a good and inspiring movie, although the acting by Benjamin Bratt and James Franco comes across as suprisingly unemotional. The look of the movie is very effective as well, with much of it looking somewhat faded and washed-out, and the use of original black & white film clips was especially effective. And in spite of the over-the-top violence shown in some recent war movies, it is rather restrained here, although a few scenes of executions by the Japanese soldiers are shown in gut-wrenching detail. But this isn't the main agenda of the movie, as the Japanese atrocities (as detailed in the book) are limited in their portrayal here. Nevertheless, those scenes alone are the reason for the R rating. Good movie, but I recommend the book.
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Some films just get made simply because so much time and money has been wasted developing them that it almost seems unthinkable not to make them even though everyone at the studio has long since lost interest. Case in point The Great Raid, one of Miramax's infamous shelf-hoggers. Initially intended as a Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise vehicle before they got a better offer from the Martians, it finally went before the cameras in Australia and China in 2002 with the less than A-list combo of director John Dahl and an underpowered cast headed by Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes and Connie Nielson only for Harvey Scissorhands to spend three years tinkering with the cut (Disney later claimed that, like the 45 other films still on the shelf at the time they parted company, the Weinsteins shelved it so it wouldn't affect their performance-related bonus and severance pay), by which time it had cost some $70m or more. Junked in a few theatres to no discernible business in their let's-wreck-the-joint-for-the-new-management spree when they started their new company, it never made it across the Atlantic, quietly sneaking out onto DVD when no-one was looking.
While it's easy to see why Spielberg and Cruise bailed - not enough drama, no big star role - the end result certainly isn't anything to be ashamed of. Based on the most successful rescue mission in US military history, when a group of untested Rangers rescued 500 prisoners of war in Cabanatuan in the Philippines before their Japanese captors could kill them, it's the kind of film you're surprised wasn't made decades ago. Even the casting of Fiennes seems strangely reminiscent of James Fox (an actor his career seems to be aping more and more lately) in the undervalued King Rat and even if the film is never quite as stark, it surprisingly avoids historical revisionism or excuses for the Japanese. The opening sequence, though not excessively gory, is genuinely shocking in its callousness, and unlike Pearl Harbor the film makes no attempt to water down the brutality of the Japanese Army to those they deemed inferior races, Allied prisoners and Filipino civilians alike: it's hard to see this selling many tickets in Japan.
Curiously its biggest problem is its historical accuracy: the determination to (for the most part) avoid phoney heroics unfortunately isn't matched by an ability to make the long march to the camp particularly dramatic, the Rangers themselves barely registering as characters for much of the movie. At times this puts more weight on the prison camp sequences and a subplot with Connie Nielson's doctor smuggling drugs to the prisoners through the local underground (true but playing more like demographic-inspired fiction at times) than they can bear, with much of the middle of the film sagging, especially compared to the surprisingly powerful ending. As with most P.O.W. films, the actors look too healthy despite their best efforts and the desaturated photography has become too much of a war movie cliché to impress anymore, but there's a sincerity to the film and a pride in what these men did that carries it over many of its rough patches: it's hard not to feel moved by the lengthy archive footage of the real liberated prisoners and their rescuers at the end (the 2-disc director's cut DVD also includes also a couple of powerful documentaries with veterans). One niggle though: while most of the cast make credible enough soldiers, filmmakers really should stop casting Dale Dye as officers - he may be the only real soldier in the picture, but he never convinces as one on screen and his cameos are starting to get as annoyingly gratuitous as Michael G. Wilson's in the Bond films.
Rating:  -
This is one of the finest films I have ever seen. I would recommend it to anyone. it is very compelling, because its true.
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I'm not sure exactly why but it seems like I've been watching a lot of military movies of late, and this is among the better ones I've seen. The Great Raid moves a little slowly before it finds itself, but this rescue is a story that cried out for a telling on the big screen. The depiction of the US Army Rangers' raid on a Japanese death camp is among the greatest sequences in modern war films, and represented the saving of human life that is every bit as noble and brave in its own fashion as the deeds of Oscar Schindler as portrayed in Schindler's List. Also the DVD extras on The Great Raid are actually worth watching, especially the interviews with Death March survivors, and also the footage of the actors going through boot camp courtesy of Dale Dye. To anyone who might say, "this movie made the Japanese look like savages" I'd point out that it is meticulously based on real life events. I'm glad nothing was sugar-coated for politically correct purposes.
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This is definitely one of the best war movies I have ever seen!!! Like Grave of The Fireflies, it shows how cruel war itself can be...Yes, there are times when the movie sounds off like a History Channel program, but it's still a great war movie!!! Being that I'm Filipino, this movie also gave me a glimpse of what it must have been like during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines...it also made me realize how my grandparents truly felt during that time...Long story short; great raid, great movie!!!
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