Director John Dahl continues his voyage into the mainstream with “The Great Raid,” a standard “men on a mission” war picture that could have been made in the 1940s.
Dahl’s R-rated movie shows more violence than they did back then, but he’s telling a simple story of heroes and villains with little room for shading. It is filled with earnest young officers, pipe-smoking commanders, nervous GIs, pitiless enemy soldiers and even a lovesick nurse.
There’s nothing much wrong with “The Great Raid,” but there’s nothing remarkable about it either. It’s a step backward for Dahl, whose other films include the underrated murder-for-hire tale “Red Rock West” and “The Last Seduction,” a neo-noir featuring one of the most deliciously vile femme fatales (Linda Fiorentino) since Lady Macbeth.
Dahl’s last movie, the horror-suspense film “Joy Ride,” was mighty conventional, and “The Great Raid” is even more so. Clearly, Dahl is trying to break out of the crime mode, but one would expect his war movie to more resemble Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” than “Sands of Iwo Jima.”
It is possible that Dahl felt like his hands were tied because “The Great Raid” is a true story (based on two books), about a mission to rescue American POWs in the Philippines at the end of World War II.
As the Americans advance, the Japanese kill prisoners, so the Allied high command decides to try to liberate about 500 POWs from a single camp. It taps an untested unit of Army Rangers led by Lt. Col. Mucci (a miscast Benjamin Bratt) and Capt. Prince (James Franco).
Prince drafts a plan to defeat the Japanese guards and free the POWs, but when the Japanese send troops into the area, the Americans recruit Filipino resistance fighters to help them.
The rescuers can’t arrive soon enough for the prisoners, many suffering from malaria, starvation and other ills. Since the Japanese have no respect for surrendering troops, the POWs are treated poorly and tortured and killed if they try to escape.
The ranking American in the camp, Maj. Gibson (Joseph Fiennes), orders that no one try to leave, hoping U.S. forces will arrive in time. The men are given hope when the Japanese guards abandon the camp, but it quickly fades as secret police arrive.
While the Japanese withhold medicine and food from the POWs, the Filipino underground continues to smuggle supplies into the camp. They are assisted by Margaret Utinksy (Connie Nielsen), a nurse who has stayed behind because she loves Gibson.
“The Great Raid” offers what you would expect from an old-style war film. The underground shoots it out with black marketers and suffer under Japanese interrogation.
The final assault delivers on the action, though it is filmed in a conventional fashion.
While the story of “The Great Raid” might have never been told on film, it is like every other POW movie, in this case made about 45 years too late.
“The Great Raid”
***
R for strong war violence and some rough language |2 hours, 12 minutes|WORLD WAR II DRAMA|Directed by John Dahl; written by Douglas Miro and Carlo Bernard; photography by Peter Menzies; starring Benjamin Bratt, Joseph Fiennes, Connie Nielsen, James Franco, Marton Csokas and Mark Consuelos |Opens today at area theaters.
