This smart, unhurried drama plays out like a retro version of Saving Private Ryan.
Comment
08/12/05
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The Great Raid (2005)
35
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:116
Fresh:41
Rotten:75
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: Though the climax of the film -- the actual raid -- is exciting, the rest of it is bogged down in too many subplots and runs on for too long.
Theatrical Release:Aug 12, 2005 Wide
Box Office: $10,074,830
Synopsis: Director John Dahl switches genres from film noir (THE LAST SEDUCTION, RED ROCK WEST) to military actioner with THE GREAT RAID. Following the 1942 Bataan Death March, thousands of U.S. and Filipino... [More]
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini
Director: John Dahl
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Reviews for The Great Raid
The story of one of the most daring and successful raids in U.S. Army history turns out to be mystifyingly inert on screen.
08/12/05
A great story filled with real heroics deserves better than this.
08/12/05
The film is much better as a ticking-clock action picture than as a story of human emotions, be they romantic, altruistic or base.
08/12/05
Dahl gets it half-right, and completely wrong. In studio fashion, he adds a composite character and a love story, which the story really doesn't require. In indie tradition, he refuses to cast any stars -- which the picture desperately needs.
08/12/05
Top CriticI hereby award the World War II drama The Great Raid a Cement Star for faithful and distinguished service to the cause of mediocrity.
08/12/05
Top CriticNot a great movie, but it certainly does justice to the great historical event it dramatizes.
08/12/05
Top CriticObsessed with authenticity, the movie simply isn't 'Hollywood' enough. What could have been a valuable history lesson for everyone is just more fodder for military buffs.
08/12/05
You have to salute its devotion to heroism, but a gripping, involving movie would have been a greater tribute.
08/12/05
See the film for its depiction of astounding heroism and military ingenuity. Take the rest with a grain of salt.
08/12/05
At times the action drags, but the details of the raid itself are riveting. The rescue scenes will leave you feeling as if you were in the midst of battle.
08/12/05
The picture's broad outline may be fact, but everything inside gets painted in a deep shade of bogus.
08/12/05
Telling the audience they're watching heroes is a very different thing than stirring emotions and ratcheting up suspense.
08/12/05
It never gives its characters enough character to build the sentiment required.
08/12/05
For Dahl, war isn't poetry or surreal irony or metaphoric hell. It's a job that has to be done, and in cases like this one, it has the side product of being heroic.
08/12/05
Top CriticWhen the movie finally does show what the troops went through and how the raid itself was pulled off, it's exciting, enthralling stuff. If only there was more of that. . . .
08/12/05
Dahl's movie probably attempts to touch too many bases, which means it suffers from a divided attention span.
08/12/05
Top CriticThe Great Raid has an old-fashioned feel -- that is, old-fashioned in a musty way.
08/12/05
The dialogue falls back on cliches that were hoary when MacArthur left the Philippines.
08/12/05
The moral ambiguity and ambivalence that are at the heart of all great war films have been stripped away in favor of facile cheerleading, almost all of which wears painfully thin.
08/12/05
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