Trying to do too much

Rating: Null/10 (9 December 2003)

Hart's War was a very good novel but the movie was a bit of a disappointment because it tried to be too much. We have a plot similar to "The Great Escape". They're tunneling out of a German P.O.W. camp, albeit for different reasons. Second, we have "To Kill a Mockingbird" where a black man is put on trial for a crime he did not commit. We also have a nice little bit from "A Few Good Men" where Colin Farrell goes all 'Tom Cruise' on us and goes on a roll before the really stupid move of confessing that HE commited the murder, when in fact he didn't. Also, they crammed two characters into one. In the novel, the Commandant is Oberst von Reiter. There is the chief of security at the camp who is Hauptmann Heinrich Visser, who has only one arm. I think it was lazy for them to eleminate a key character and then give us a two-in-one guy who falls short of a good role. In short, read the book, you won't be sorry.