Hartās War
Itās probably never a good idea when you cast Colin Farrell, that most non-masculine of actors whose apparent āstardomā continues to cause this viewer a great deal of bewilderment, in whatās supposed to be a tough, gritty war film about the lives of American soldiers in a WWII POW camp. That, plus a wildly uneven script that ventures off in different directions, greatly hinders this 2002 film from director Gregory Hoblit (a journeyman director whose past work DOES show potential to one day break him into the top echelon of filmmakers). Farrell plays Thomas Hart, a lieutenant and senatorās son who finds himself captured by the Nazis before breaking down after a couple of days of interrogation and disclosing the whereabouts of the Allied headquarters (not too daunting when you consider what Brad Pitt and Co. did to the Germans in Inglourious Basterds) and then being sent to a POW camp where the top ranking American officer is a Colonel played by Bruce Willis (whose scenes with Farrell help to greatly underscore the latterās almost effeminate presence). Shortly after, a couple of black pilots are sent there, leading to the usual rampant racism by the white soldiers, before a murder takes place and one of the black guys is arrested, but not before Willis convinces the Commandant to let them hold a military trial which the German officer tacitly agrees to as a way of having a fun spectacle so that he can see the American justice system at work, even as Willis uses the trial as a cover for his men to plan their āgreat escapeā from the prison camp. The film veers off in different directions here and there, from the aforementioned POW drama to a melodramatic epiphany about racial tolerance and finally a courtroom thriller as Farrell is assigned the task of defending the black pilot against an obviously racist tribunal before wrapping up with the pseudo-action climax. Farrellās inadequacies as a performer are somewhat offset by some good actors doing the best they can: Willis is probably better than anybody at playing a hard-bitten badass, and gamely tries to save the movie by pulling a John Wayne at the end that echoes his fate in Armageddon; Terrence Howard as the pilot on trial does a lot of whining early on about his predicament, but gets better towards the end when he decides to accept his fate āfor the good of the missionā; Cole Hauser is stuck with a character whose development jumps back and forth from being a good, noble guy to a nasty, hateful racist bastard, but at least he has presence enough to carry his scenes through; Romanian actor Marcel Iures is the most surprisingly good performance as the Commandant, though the script gets carried away with showing how ārefinedā his character is, starting with him being a Yale grad to being overtly helpful with the murder investigation to finally him being a jazz aficionado, making one wonder why he doesnāt just hang out with the prisoners and sing folk songs; Rory Cochrane registers well as another one of the prisoners; and there are even blink and you miss em roles for Jonathan Brandis (who reportedly was so distraught at having his role cut out of the movie that it led to his suicide) and Sam (Avatar) Worthington. Indeed, the film tries hard (and succeeds) at giving off the atmosphere of enduring a bitter winter in a POW camp, complete with rats in the latrine and everyone scrounging for food and cigarettes, but ultimately it doesnāt add up to much, as this is just another time-worn story of how a young naĆÆve individual ultimately ābecomes a manā. Overall, what could have been a decent watch is undone by its heavy-handed story and poor lead castingā¦
5/10