A tear in my eye as I sat watching, proud to be an American

Rating: 9/10 (8 August 2005)

I am a former US military historian and had the opportunity on Saturday evening to view an advanced screening of The Great Raid. The screenplay was based on two books: William Breuer's "The Great Raid on Cabanatuan" and Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers."
It is January 1945. The U.S. Sixth Army has landed in Luzon in the Philippines and is advancing upon Manila. The retreating Japanese Army are under orders from Tokyo to kill all the prisoners of war they hold. The Japanese do not respect those who surrender and also do not want the POWs to testify to the many Japanese war crimes committed from the invasion onward. Early on the movie, we are shown the real life war atrocity at an island POW camp where Americans are forced into air raid shelters and then immolated.
The Sixth Army's commanding officer, General Kreuger (Vietnam veteran Dale Dye, Captain, USMC (Ret), who was the film's military adviser) has intelligence from "stay behinds" (Americans who fled into the hills after the surrender) and Philippine guerrillas that the Cabanatuan POWs are in grave jeopardy as the Sixth Army closes in.
Kreuger turns to Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt, commander of the 6th Ranger Battalion. Unlike other Ranger battalions, Mucci's Rangers are untested, comprised primarily of soldiers who came to the Pacific Theater of Operations as animal handlers. Mucci has trained his men well though and yearns for a mission where they can prove themselves.
Mucci selects Captain Bob Prince (James Franco), a young Stanford graduate, to plan and lead the raid on Cabantuan. Though Mucci tells Prince that the Captain will lead the raid, Mucci is to accompany Prince and his 120 volunteers on the mission, causing frictions along the way.
Meanwhile, at Cabantuan, the remaining 500+ POWs are in the worst state, the healthier ones having been moved to work forced labor elsewhere in Japanese territory. The POWs are led by Major Gibson (Joseph Fiennes) who is racked with malaria. He does his best to keep his men disciplined and away from the wrath of their sadistic Japanese captors. Gibson's best friend is Captain Redding (Marton Csokas), a man who admits to no friends except the Major and who plans of escaping despite the Japanese threat to kill ten POWs for every man who tries to escape.
In Manila, Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen) is an American nurse with a forged Lithuanian passport working with the Filipino underground. She is part of a smuggling ring that is getting needed medicines into Cabantuan. She was married to a friend of Gibson who later died. Gibson and Utinsky carry the torch for each other and wonder if they will ever be reunited.
Thus, the movie moves on three fronts: Mucci and Prince and the 120 Rangers who must cross 30 miles of enemy held territory to Cabantuan amidst thousands of Japanese soldiers; Gibson and the POWs at the camp; and Utinsky and the Filipino underground.
Some critics have complained that the movie is a bit slow and talky. This is true in the early going but it is absolutely necessary to establish the conditions the POWs were living under and the acts of brutality and torture that occurred not only to the POWs but the Filipino resistance. You cannot understand just how important the raid is until you understand what is happening to the POWs and what horror is to come. That said, the unrequited love story between Gibson and Utinsky was unnecessary and tacked on 30 minutes to the movie.
The Filipino and Filipino-American community should love this movie as it portrays their people in a very positive light. Prince's Rangers are dependent upon Captain Juan Pajota, a skilled guerrilla leader who scouts and leads the Rangers into enemy territory, and then is tasked with holding off several thousand Japanese troops while the Americans raid the camp.
The desire for historical accuracy is also very impressive in this film. For example, Cabantuan curiously featured a few British POWs, gathered in from British possessions in Southeast Asia. One minor character is shown with an accent. There is the "stay behind" American officer. Most impressive is the inclusion of the Alamo Scouts, a little known Army long-range reconnaissance unit that helped scout the camp in preparation for the raid. Weapons appear to be accurate--the Filipinos with older M1928 Thompsons and water-cooled .30 caliber machine guns and the Japanese even carrying Japanese arms (rare for Hollywood). We are even shown a Japanese Banzai Charge--a suicidal rush of soldiers with bayonets, successful against a poor Chinese Army in the 1930s, but not so successful against the American forces.
I read Sides' book and the plot hews very closely to the real-life events. In reality, this is a 3 1/2 star movie but the detail to historical accuracy is worth another 1/2 star. It is the best movie I have seen in what is an admittedly poor year for Hollywood. It should do very well in Red State America. Maybe even in Blue States: at the end of the film, newsreel footage of the actual Rangers and POWs is shown as the credits roll. Only one person that I could see got up to leave. Almost the entire audience stayed until this segment was over.
This movie is patriotic and not politically correct. The Japanese military police are portrayed as they were: sadistic, brutal, and cold.
If you watch this entirety of this movie, with the Rangers storming the camp and carrying the emaciated POWs on their shoulders and don't feel proud to be an American, then you're just a Communist.
**** out of ****