Hogan Never Had It So Good

Rating: 5/10 (18 September 2008)

This film had a stellar cast, and most of them delivered. The score was unusually cheerful and eerie, too. A strange combination. In reality, allied POW's in German detention camps were treated with contempt and without mercy. What we have in this film, however, are a bunch of guys who act like they belong in a country club. The country club/summer camp they reside in is a fun place, except you'll get shot if they catch you climbing the fence. That's it - no mention of the terrible brutality these guys actually endured or the fact that they were given barely enough food to live on. No mention of the atrocities regularly visited upon them by their Nazi captors, including beatings, executions, and forced marches. Instead, we get gentlemanly or comical Germans who seem to actually care what the POW's think of them.
James Garner's character seems to epitomize the relaxed country club type who seems to be on vacation. He never takes off his turtleneck, which, no doubt, would cause the average person to perspire and stink after awhile. Steve McQueen, as usual, was the coolest guy in the room, but why would the Nazis allow him to have a baseball and glove to keep himself amused while in solitary confinement? Why didn't they just shoot him or beat the hell out of him after he was captured? Instead, they treated him like a naughty school boy. Richard Attenborough turned in a fine performance, but in reality, the Nazis would have never allowed him to take such a leadership role among the other prisoners. They would have singled him out and broken him instead of giving him respect.
The film had many powerful moments: the motorcycle chase, the fatal error on the bus, the massacre, the shooting of the fence climber....these were all extremely well done. The film ultimately failed, though, because it did a disservice to the men who actually lived through this by failing to convey the wretched conditions of a German POW camp.
The film had many moments where you had to suspend reality for such banal situations. Why in the world would the Nazis have ever allowed the Americans to hold a 4th of July celebration that include a parade, a picnic, and free-flowing vodka? Why would they allow a still on the premises to make homemade vodka from potatoes? Where did the Americans find a large American flag and why were they allowed to run it up a flagpole? Where did they find the smaller 13-star flag to wave around? Wasn't it out of character for Hilts to suddenly become a master flutist, blowing out a flawless rendition of "Yankee Doodle"? Colonel Klink would never have allowed Hogan and the boys such privileges! I'm surprised the Nazi guards didn't bake them cookies! What about when Hilts took out the planks from the bunkbeds (all of them) to use to reinforce the tunnel? The beds were now unusable, but the Germans didn't seem to notice all the guys sleeping on the floor, I guess. I could go on and on about these lapses in reality and this is why I wouldn't recommend this film for anyone over the age of 11.
Add to this the 1960's film making habit of over illuminating all indoor scenes to the point where it seems like the actors need to wear sunglasses, and you have a very poor rendering of a POW camp. Was I the only one who noticed that the interactions and dialogue of these impeccably dressed and well-groomed men seemed like the goings-on in an upscale gay social club?