NOTE: MINOR SPOILERS CONTAINED, NONE THAT GIVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT AWAY, BUT A FEW THAT DESCRIBE THE STORY. A great action movie, appealing to Willis/Schwarzenegger fans, but it appeals A LOT to film intell

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2002)

Review written by: an average middle-class white American suburban Joe (a film intellectual)
If you love Arnold Schwarzenegger/Bruce Willis shoot-em-up action movies (such as Die Hard) with more violence than plot, storyline and value, then THIS MOVIE IS FOR YOU. YOU'LL LOVE IT.
Now that that's out of the way, fans of those kind of movies can stop reading here. Intellectuals read on.
This movie is TERRIFFIC. Without giving away too much, I will tell you that this is one of those movies whose preview did not accurately portray this movie for what it actually is. Perhaps that was the filmmakers' intent: to get a bunch of fans of violent movies to buy tickets, only to be completely shocked by something totally different. The movie's trailer portrayed it as an action movie about a last-chance effort to escape a Nazi concentration camp. That's misleading; the movie was intellectually stimulating, took unexpected twists and turns throughout (which NONE of them were predictable). Unlike most Hollywood movies, you COULD NOT predict where this one was going: not looking at it's poster or preview, not ¼ of the way into it, not even ¾ of the way to the ending.
The plot: some US soldiers are captured during WWII by the Germans and sent to a POW camp. It's funny that while there, even in the camps, their authority structure remains intact (Colonel, Lieutenant, soldier, etc.) although of course all Americans, regardless of rank, are under the authority of the Germans running the camp. Anyway, all the Americans are white, until two black pilots from the only `colored' air force are shot-down and captured, then sent to live in the all-white barracks that are full of white bigots.
One of the black pilots is framed for having a weapon underneath his bed, and upon inspection from the Nazis, one is found. The penalty for a POW having a weapon? The Nazis execute him. But the weapon was put there by the bigot white who wanted him to die. When the other black pilot finds this out, he avenges his friend's death by killing the white man who arranged the frame.
So Bruce Willis's character, Hart, steps in, asking the Nazi colonel for the remaining black man's right to a trial instead of being hung immediately for killing the white man. A trial about racism inside a Nazi concentration camp? You'd think that you could predict where the movie would go from there, turning into a morality play, but you'd never guess accurately. Now go see it yourself.
It's obvious that this is not one of those films that was written, filmed, and edited in two years like Charlie's Angels or some other garbage. This film had the quality and depth that it takes four or more years to produce.
One of the most interesting aspects of the movie is that in some scenes the Nazi colonel is less racist than the bigoted Americans! Now what a statement about segregated American society in the 1940s! Us white people in that era were as racist as the Nazis we were fighting against!
One problem I had with this movie: it's portrayal of Nazis is not at all the way that they have been portrayed in typical WWII movies. In fact, the Nazi colonel is in fact NICE to many of the American POWs. Now how realistic is that? I wasn't a soldier in or even alive during WWII, but I think that a real Nazi would've put the black man to death outright without a trial. And he wouldn't have taken any attitude from any of the Americans, which he does throughout the movie. Still, a `nice' Nazi was needed for this film to show us white Americans that we were more racist than the Nazis in that era. There are some teriffic lines of dialog about this not given here to spoil it. Another example of unrealism is that this Nazi is an educated man from Yale who likes Black American jazz music.
The acting is FLAWLESS. Colin Farrell, a newcomer to Hollywood who plays S. Lt. Hart, is (to quote Roger Ebert's review of this movie in the Chicago Sun-Times), `obviously destined for stardom.' And Willis plays a convincing army commander, one of the best performances of his life. The actor playing the Nazi is incredible as well, as well as the two black pilots.
Now a technical detail: the sound. See it in a good THX-certified theater with 5.1-channel surround sound. My review of it's sound is completely dependent on your seeing it in a theater with 5.1-channel digital surround sound. There were a few fly-by effects into the speakers to your sides or behind you, but since this is mostly a drama and not a fighting movie, there weren't many of them. However, as characters walked out of a room exiting a scene, doors closed behind them in the right or left channels, adding a degree of dimensionality/spaciality to the sound as if you were watching this as a play on a Broadway stage. Dialog was clearly audible (although, again, this is dependent on your seeing it in a theater with digital surround sound and preferably THX-certified). Music was ambient, with quite a bit in the rear speakers, adding to the depth of the drama.
FINAL WORD: Perhaps the best thing about this movie is it's portrayal of honor and sacrafice. My rating: 8.5 out of 10! I think we're talking the 2003 Oscars here.
P.S.: For those of you who've seen the movie: wouldn't it be interesting if a remake was done, reversing races so that everyone that was black in the original is white in the re-make, and vice-versa? It wouldn't be historically accurate, of course, but to see the original and then the remake back-to-back would be an interesting statement about racial double standards in our society.