A study of American character

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 2003)

Hart's War may or may not be accurate portrayal of the setting & situations it draws on for its material. It's probably not a classic of the WWII war film genre or the prison camp film genre. But it fairly uses the conventions of the WWII & prison camp films in the service of the story it means to tell, and it tells a good story.
As story, Hart's War amounts to a complex, but in no way overly complicated, study of images of American ethical ideal, of American heroism. It plays American cultural images of courage against each other in such a way that the contrasts among them don't cancel them out but rather grant them each a validity loosely tied to the history we draw them from. The courage of the military commander risking death to strike a blow for a uniquely American societal freedom confronts the courage of the heir of American liberal education and wealth awakening to defend another against injustice bound up with the American way of life, and both are confronted by the courage of the pushed- aside, the oppressed minority, claiming his own standing & right in virtue of the supremacy of the law and its grant of equality under the American system. As such it's a story that demands deft character construction, the portrayal of individuals as fully formed -- not caricature -- in motivation, action, & interaction; and the script obviously makes its characters its heart.
As film, Hart's War is carefully composed: tightly paced, woven together with great streamlining camera & production work, unfolded with the inevitability of good storytelling and little of either the audio or the visual that could be called unnecessary or indulgent. It makes a great virtue of apparent simplicity and manages to richly evoke place and atmosphere of war-torn Europe without being fussy about detail.
It may not be one of the truly great WWII movies, but it probably wasn't intended to be. For what it seems intended to be, it impresses me each time I watch it. I recommend it.