Starts strongly but finishes weakly

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2010)

Since about 1975, films about World War II have not been as popular as they were in the three decades following the end of the conflict, although there have been occasional attempts to resurrect the genre. "Hart's War", dating from 2002, represents a return to a particular sub-genre of the war film, the prisoner of war drama once represented by the likes of "The Wooden Horse", "The Colditz Story" "Bridge on the River Kwai" and "The Great Escape".
The action takes place in the winter of 1944/45. The title character is Lieutenant Thomas Hart, a young American officer captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge and taken to a prisoner of war camp. In civilian life Hart was a law student at Yale, and although he is not yet a qualified lawyer he is ordered by Colonel William McNamara, the senior American officer in the camp, to undertake the defence of Lieutenant Lincoln Scott, a black airman accused of murder. (The German Commandant has agreed that Scott may have a court-martial under American military law).
The murdered man was Sergeant Vic Bedford, a racist with a vicious hatred of blacks, and it is assumed that Scott killed him in revenge for his part in the death of another black officer, Lieutenant Archer. (Archer was shot by the Germans after a tent spike, which could be used as a weapon, was found in his bunk, and Scott believes that Bedford planted it there). Scott, however, denies responsibility for Bedford's death and Hart sets about defending him to the best of his ability. Hart, however, becomes suspicious of McNamara, who is acting as president of the court, and begins to believe that he may have his reasons for wanting Scott found guilty. A complicating factor is that Hart suffers from feelings of guilt after revealing intelligence to the Germans under interrogation.
Traditional POW movies could be divided into two categories. The first category, like "The Wooden Horse", were pure adventure stories concentrating on the theme of escape. The second, exemplified by the likes of "Bridge on the River Kwai" or "King Rat", were character-driven dramas which concentrated on more serious themes. Some, like "The Great Escape", included elements of both types.
"Hart's War" is another film which attempts to straddle both categories. In the first half it appears to be a psychological character drama concentrating on the theme of racism in the US military. This could have been an interesting subject. Black servicemen joined the Armed Forces to serve a country which treated them as second-class citizens in peacetime, only to find that they were treated as third-class citizens in wartime by their white brothers-in-arms, who often hated them more than they did the enemy.
This first half is well done; we get to see that Bruce Willis (as McNamara) can play something other than "Die Hard" type action heroes and we get a good sense of the hardships suffered by the POWs at this time. With the war almost over, Germany was desperately short of food and virtually everything else, and feeding enemy prisoners was not a high priority of the Nazi leadership, especially as the winter of 1944/45 was a particularly hard one. (I did, however, think it was unlikely that the German authorities would tolerate the prisoners putting on a show which openly mocked their country and the Nazi leadership).
Unfortunately, the film goes downhill in the second half as it turns from a study of racism into an escape story. We learn, among other revelations, that McNamara knows full well that Scott is innocent, because he killed Bedford, an informer for the Germans, himself. Unknown to Hart and the other participants, the trial is merely an elaborate charade to cover up a plan by McNamara and a group of other prisoners to escape and destroy a nearby munitions plant, and McNamara seems unconcerned that this charade might result in the execution of an innocent man.
This part of the film became unconvincing and difficult to follow; there is an attempt at a discussion of the meaning of duty and the ethics of war, but this is too muddled to be really enlightening. "Hart's War" is one of those films which starts strongly but finishes weakly, and in this it resembles the Robert Redford vehicle "The Last Castle", another film from the early 2000s about soldiers in captivity. It is in nothing like the class of the great POW dramas such as "The Great Escape" or "Bridge on the River Kwai". 5/10