Tired, Cliché Mish Mash of World War II Movies

Rating: 3/10 (22 December 2005)

To try and stay awake during "Hart's War" I tried to keep track of the number of movies, TV shows and books that it borrowed from, but I lost the battle.
There went "A Soldier's Story," and here comes Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities," and every WWII movie in the Pacific Theater that has the Japanese commandant say "You are surprised I speak your language. USC 1938." This grafts together at least four different military movies--battles, tortures, POWs, "You can't handle the truth!" court martials -- so there were a lot of clichés they could draw on. This is a male version of "Charlotte Gray" for a contemporary, uncredible approach to WWII.
I went to see it to monitor Colin Farrell's career whose debut in another military movie, "Tigerland" was electrifying, and I liked director Gregory Hoblitt's TV work. But Farrell as a Yale Law School student in 1944 was about as believable as Bruce Willis as a fourth generation West Pointer. I kept wondering how they keep their hair so neatly trimmed in the POW camp.
Terrence Howard comes out the best in integrating the story of the Tuskegee Airmen into the stalag part of the movie, though wasn't there a black soldier in "Hogan's Heroes"? The German commandant, played by Rumanian actor Marcel Iures, was also non-stereotypical.
Rachel Portman's swelling music is really intrusive to any suspense.
The theater was virtually empty and I don't think it was due to the plot-revealing ads, as the director claims.
(originally written 3/3/2002)