Even this movie skirts the terror with a simple voice-over in filling in the background story of a group of surviving prisoners held for over three years. While WWII German brutality is everywhere in motion picture, few have addressed the stark horrors of the Bataan Death March. Meanwhile, thousands of American troops are trapped by the swift-moving Japanese forces on the islands of Bataan and Corrigidor and are compelled to surrender. Douglas MacArthur - thanks to Roosevelt's decision to devote more to the European effort through the Lend-Lease to Churchill program - is forced to evacuate the Philippines and retreat to Australia. The film begins with a crisp narration (accompanied by actual film footage) of the quick successes of the Imperial Japanese Army in the days following Pearl Harbor. "The Great Raid" is a fine little film, smart, patriotic and fairly historically accurate.
Now John Dahl ("Rounders," "Joyride," the TV series "Tilt") has shed some light on a little-known rescue attempt in the waning days of the conflict in the Philippine Islands. In fact, only a handful of motion pictures have touched on the subject over the last two decades, namely Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun," Terrance Malik's "The Thin Red Line," and the Nicolas Cage bomb, "Windtalkers." The best film in this genre was probably 1957's "Bridge On The River Kwai," which won Oscars for David Lean and Alex Guinness, among others, but that was almost 50 years ago. While Hollywood has gone after the Nazis and the European campaign in World War II over and over again, ad nauseam, little has been produced depicting the Pacific Theatre or the thousands of Americans and others who perished there. I doubt this picture will even make $20 million here.Īnd one more thing, I thought it was a very tasteful and respectful thing to do at the end during the credits where they showed archival footage of the real soldiers being rescued. Definitely one of the best movies so far of the year, I'm just sad that almost no one has heard about it and the movie has received so little promotion. They did a really good job of explaining exactly what they wanted to do beforehand and when it actually happened, you understood where everyone was running to and what they were trying to accomplish.Įxcellent movie, and highly recommended. I really enjoyed the story and thought all the roles were well acted.
This movie also doesn't rely on gimmicks such as CGI or what I call "shaky camera syndrome" where the filmmakers insist on making the audience nauseous by running around with handy-cams (ala Bourne Supremacy). This is definitely not a movie for people with near zero attention spans from the MTV Generation. Some people commented on how slow the movie is during the beginning, and although that is true, it is there to give you time to develop a story and actual care about the characters. I knew almost nothing of this film before I saw it but based on a couple comments I had heard, I went with my dad to see it tonight.