slow, plodding POW film

Rating: Null/10 (11 July 2002)

There's scarcely a believable moment in `Hart's War,' a World War II POW-drama that concentrates more on the internecine squabbles among the American prisoners than on the conflict between the captives and the captors. Such an approach might have lent the film a certain amount of uniqueness and distinction had director Gregory Hoblit not driven it into the ground by turning the whole thing into a long, windy gabfest. Indeed, except for a few promising actions scenes at the beginning, most of the film boils down to endless conversations between various characters and a tedious, drawn out courtroom drama that defies credibility even from the outset.
Even though Bruce Willis receives top billing in the credits, it is really Colin Farrell who earns both the lead and title character role as Lieutenant Thomas W. Hart, a somewhat pampered officer who has managed to rise in the ranks and to avoid real combat duty thanks to his influential daddy back home. Riddled with guilt at everyone's seeming recognition of his own inexperience and cowardice, Hart soon finds himself a surprise prisoner-of-war in a German camp in 1944 Belgium. There he is forced to finally prove both his mettle and his manhood when a couple of recently downed black army officers are placed into the prisoners' barracks. Racial tensions quickly erupt leading to the deaths of two of the men under Hart's command. Willis plays Colonel McNamara, a West Point careerist who, frustrated by his inability to participate in the `real war' happening outside, decides to wage a little war of his own inside the camp, using his very own men as pawns and weapons  even going so far as to allow an innocent man to die  in order to achieve his ends.
Beyond the fact that the trial itself seems highly improbable given both the setting and the circumstances in which the characters find themselves, the director just never seems to be able to generate any real dramatic tension either in the conflicts among the prisoners themselves nor from the threat posed by the German commandants and guards, who seem far too weak, befuddled and accommodating to be very convincing as real life Nazis. Despite the personal agonies experienced by many of these characters, the audience always remains outside the film's emotional circle, becoming little more than disinterested, detached observers. We never feel much personal stake in the movie's outcome. Part of the blame goes to the bland performances by Willis and Farrell (who is much more effective in Steven Spielberg's `Minority Report.'), neither of whom register much beyond surface expressions. But the majority of the blame goes to the writers and to the director for allowing the film to become so inert, plodding and tedious that we lose all interest in what they are presenting.
Despite its salutary dedication to the values of courage, honor and self-sacrifice, `Hart's War,' turns out to be a battle not worth fighting.