The Great Raid (2005)
Runtime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini, Joseph Fiennes
Screenwriter: Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro
Producer: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Jonathan Gordon, Lawrence Bender, Marty Katz
Composer: Trevor Rabin
DVD Info
Release:
Sep 19, 2006
Blu-ray Disc Features:
- Blue BD Case
- Widescreen - 2.40
Audio:
- Dolby Digital Surround Sound 5.1 - English
- Subtitles - English SDH, French, Spanish - Optional
Additional Release Material:
- Commentaries - 1. John Dahl - Director, Marty Katz - Producer, Captain Dale Dye - Technical Advisor, Scott Chestnut - Editor, and Hampton Sides - Source Writer
Interactive Features:
- Scene Selection
- "Seamless Menus"
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
Instead of a tribute to a fine chapter in the annals of the Greatest Generation, we have a second-rate romance right out of a cheesy, pulp fiction novel.
A well-produced, rousing feature based on one of those forgotten World War II episodes that make for great cinema.
While the historical events depicted were unusual and cause for genuine celebration, the film that depicts these events is a dull, by-the-numbers set of war-movie clichés.
It moves slowly and methodically, showing us the minutest particulars of every facet of the operation. There's more here than we need to know.
The Great Raid has one amazing action sequence. You just have to watch the whole story in order to earn and appreciate it.
The true story part of it works. The spy and romance stuff doesn't.
It couldn't hold my attention despite the event being such a celebrated one in American history.
More of a skimpy skirmish that lasts way too short and has too little peril to be great
Might have gotten some attention if John Wayne had been around to star in it
For a man dying of malaria, Fiennes shivers impressively but also talks too much.
[D]eliciously old-fashioned... Like in how Dahl assembled a cast of perfectly 1940s faces that pop off the screen with a suave anti-Technicolor urgency...
John Dahl’s solemn staging of the rescue mission will likely earn him points from military aficionados, but The Great Raid is terminally dull.
The three unwieldy story lines might even have daunted someone like David Lean. They utterly defeat director John Dahl, a director used to working in miniature
'Nothing in our lives will ever be as important as this,' says Lt. Bratt, in a pep talk that some of his boys might have found more depressing than motivational.
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