Hart's War

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2010)

I knew the leading actor, that this was a war film, and how many stars the critics gave it, but it was up to me to try it, from director Gregory Hoblit (Frequency, Untraceable). Set in World War II, law student Lt. Thomas W. Hart (Colin Farrell) is captured by the Germans after a battle and put in a German Stalag Prison camp. He joins many other POWs (Prisoner of War), including the troops led by Col. William A. McNamara (Bruce Willis), quietly waiting to pounce on the enemy, and escape the camp. Soon the soldiers are joined by two African American pilots who from a crashed plane, Lt. Lincoln A. Scott (Terrence Howard) and Lt. Lamar T. Archer (Vicellous Reon Shannon), and the other take an instant racist dislike. In the middle of the night, Archer is murdered, giving McNamara the chance to get his plans in motion, but obviously Hart wants to find the man guilty. When Scott is accused of the murder, Hart demands a court case to both find him innocent and prove it was a white man responsible. Of course Hart doesn't realise the murder is a cover up to get an escape under way, and when McNamara is discovered as the murderer, it is hard to end the case. But in the end, the escape plan is discovered, and Col. Werner Visser (Marcel Iures) holds McNamara fully responsible, which of course he is, and allows himself to get shot, Scott is found innocent, and of course three months later the war ends. Also starring Cole Hauser as Staff Sgt. Vic W. Bedford, Linus Roache as Capt. Peter A. Ross, Rory Cochrane as Sgt. Carl S. Webb and Michael Weston as Pfc. W. Roy Potts. I can see what the critics mean with Willis not being used enough, Farrell makes a reasonable lead with his not too bad American accent, and Iures gets his moments as the German Lt., it's not a brilliant war film, but you can try it if you want to. Worth watching, at least once!