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The Great Raid [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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Prisoners of Miramax
Review date: 2008-11-28 Rating: 6 out of 10

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 Region 1 NTSC director's cut DVD also includes 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.


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Reviews


Won't play well in Japan
Review date: 2005-12-26 Rating: 10 out of 10

Amidst all the special FX-laden pap put out by Hollywood, it's the sadly infrequent film that pays tribute to American soldiers at war from any factual and/or realistic perspective. (Let's ignore such harmless scriptwriters' fantasies as TOP GUN, STEALTH, GI JANE, HEARTBREAK RIDGE, and their ilk.) How many can you think of in the past half-dozen years? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, WE WERE SOLDIERS, BLACKHAWK DOWN, and the TV miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS. Now, with our troops currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan with indifferent media coverage reporting only deaths by suicide bombers, we have THE GREAT RAID, based on a true World War II incident.

After the fall of Corregidor to the Japanese in 1942, tens of thousands of U.S. troops were herded off to captivity on the shameful Bataan Death March. Those that survived the trek languished in POW camps such as Cabanatuan, which contained 500+ prisoners in January 1945, by which time MacArthur was recapturing Philippine real estate. A battalion of Army Rangers was tasked with rescuing the Cabanatuan inmates. THE GREAT RAID is the story of that mission.

One notable feature of this film is that it and the audience are not overwhelmed by the presence of superstars which steal the show. Rather, its cast is made up of relative unknowns (at least to me) portraying professional fighters going about their business. Joseph Fiennes plays the malaria-ridden Major Gibson, the senior American officer in Cabanatuan, Motoki Kobayashi as Gibson's head jailer, the venomous Major Nagai, and Benjamin Bratt as Lt. Colonel Mucci, the commander of the Ranger rescue force. Also very effective is Connie Nielsen as Margaret Utinsky, the widow of a deceased American officer and a nurse marooned for the war in Manila, where she works at a hospital and with the Filipino underground to smuggle much needed medicines to the POWs and (especially) to her pre-war boyfriend, Gibson.

Director John Dahl is to be commended for giving due credit to the armed Filipino resistance, led here by Capt. Juan Pajota (Cesar Montano), who fought alongside the Rangers and played a crucial support role in the daring raid. Also, the ending credits include (what I presume to be) archival news footage of the evacuation and return home of the real Cabanatuan survivors - footage that gives history a face.

As an aside, Lt. General Kreuger, who ordered the rescue mission, is portrayed by ex-Marine officer Dale Dye, who has a weekend talk show on radio KFI in Los Angeles. Dye, who some might say pontificates on-air about military matters at a level above his last active duty rank (Captain, Officer Grade O-3), played an Army Colonel in BAND OF BROTHERS. Wow, O-6 to O-9 in four years! Gee, perhaps Cap'n Dale will make 5 stars in his next Big Screen appearance.

THE GREAT RAID will not play well in Japan. In the first few minutes, Japanese troops are shown forcing American POWs into air raid shelters, which are then flooded with gasoline and torched. Any burning Yanks trying to escape the inferno were shot. This, too, is ostensibly based on a true incident. WWII Pacific Theater veterans with long memories in the audience may depart the cinema thinking that the two Big Ones dropped to end the war weren't nearly enough to get even.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
James Franco
Max Martini
Joseph Fiennes
Benjamin Bratt
Robert Mammone

Creators:
Benjamin Bratt (Primary Contributor)
Joseph Fiennes (Primary Contributor)
Bob Weinstein (Producer)
Harvey Weinstein (Producer)
Jonathan Gordon (Producer)
Carlo Bernard (Writer)
Doug Miro (Writer)
Hampton Sides (Writer)
William B. Breuer (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Miramax
Manufacturer: Miramax
EAN: 0786936688337
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC,
Release date: 2005-12-20
Universal product code (UPC): 786936688337
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 1
Running time: 132 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2005-08-12
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Japanese (Original Language)
Language: Tagalog (Original Language)

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