Just about any golden age Hollywood hack could have made a zestier drama about one of the greatest rescue missions in U.S. military history.
The Great Raid (2005)
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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.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for strong war violence and brief language
Runtime: 2 hrs 13 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
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... 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 soldiers were imprisoned by the Japanese in a POW camp in Cabantauan in the Philippines. Brutalized, starved, and tortured, the prisoners languished in the camp for nearly three years. But in January 1945, an American battalion, with the help of Filipino guerrillas, planned a daring mission--some called it suicide--to rescue the five hundred U.S. soldiers still alive there. The film is told in glorious detail. The story is based on two books, THE GREAT RAID: RESCUING THE DOOMED GHOSTS OF BATAAN AND CORREGIDOR by William B. Breuer and GHOST SOLDIERS: THE EPIC ACCOUNT OF WORLD WAR II'S GREATEST RESCUE MISSION by Hampton Sides. In addition, several men involved in the raid served as consultants on the project. The result is a thrilling, agonizing, and unforgettable war movie like they used to make in the 1940s and 1950s, a celebration of the human spirit. THE GREAT RAID stars Benjamin Bratt as Lt. Colonel Mucci, an offbeat military man who puts his faith in young Captain Prince (James Franco) to lead the dangerous mission. Among the men imprisoned in the camp are Joseph Fiennes as the ailing Major Gibson and Marton Csokas as Captain Redding, who is always trying to escape. Connie Nielsen adds romantic tension as a war widow smuggling much-needed medicine into the camp. [More]
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini, Joseph Fiennes, Marton Csokas, Natalie Mendoza, Dale Dye
Director: John Dahl
Director: John Dahl
Screenwriter: Carlo Bernard, Doug Miro
Producer: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Jonathan Gordon, Lawrence Bender, Marty Katz
Composer: Trevor Rabin
Studio: Miramax Films
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Reviews for The Great Raid
While the film is often impressive and inspirational, more of the credit for this belongs to the actual events themselves than to their re-creation.
Divided three ways among the rangers, the prisoners and the resistance fighters in Manila, the movie feels unfocused, schematic and overpopulated.
Although the story of The Great Raid may have never been told on film, it's like every other POW movie, in this case made about 45 years too late.
A tedious World War II epic that slogs across the screen like a forced march in quicksand.
The Great Raid is a heartfelt film that accurately tells its story but lacks the emotional involvement to put it into the pantheon of great war films.
The action is brilliant, the combat sharp and rattling, and the film follows the historical record more closely than most Hollywood films.
Painfully slow and earnest, more like a museum exhibit than a motion picture.
Dahl makes something wonderfully curious of this historical material: an old-fashioned war picture, with no sadder-but-wiser deconstruction, no 'updated' salty language and no strained metaphors for later, more controversial conflicts.
The film is as black and white as any given State of the Union Address delivered by President George W. Bush.
Okay, so [it's] the hokiest war movie in the last 35 years....Bottom line: is the raid great? The answer is “yes,” qualified by the film’s unearned 132-minute running time.
It has dreams of sugarplum Oscars dancing in its head, and never stops mistaking spectacle for the truly spectacular.
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