Everyone sees only the missing parts to this movie...

Rating: Null/10 (13 June 2004)

I haven't read the book yet, but it is only 2 hours long...
SPOILERS FOLLOW....
Everyone "knows" that Hart is soft, that he came out of the interrogation too early, and that in his position he would have certainly overheard some valuable secrets. MacNamara (Willis) doesn't trust him - so they make so much of the Commandant being a Yale man - he may be old and tired and distraught because he has lost his son, but he, like MacNamara, is still fighting a war he wants to win because he takes his position as a soldier seriously. Visser, the Commandant, tries to get close to Hart because he suspects there might be more to learn. Maybe not about him, but about the camp itself.
Although the story takes place very quickly, and it is late in the war, there is no mention of escape attempts - it's all too clean that way. Visser is supposed to be a deep-thinking character - he always knew about the friendly trading between guards and prisoners, and he always suspected more - this was a chance to learn it.
I watched "The Last Castle" within days of seeing this movie - both are about prisons, with brutal though deep-thinking men in charge of those prisons. Their chief reason for doing anything strange - like allowing the POW's to stage a trial - is to manipulate them. They are given their sense of freedom, but it is just an illusion. Suppose the trial ended with a verdict of "not guilty"? Were the German guards bound to that decision? They were always in charge, at least in their minds. MacNamara makes a huge gamble hoping that the commandant will agree to the court martial, because he would not give up the opportunity to manipulate the prisoners. In the end, who manipulates whom?
I plan to read the book very soon. The movie, aside from the lack of depth because of the time limitation, was very, very good.