read the books, skip the movie

Rating: 1/10 (17 September 2006)

I found this movie totally unwatchable and carelessly produced, directed, and acted. It struck me as being completely, almost laughably inauthentic as to time and place, and bordering on farce in its presentation of Americans and other nationalities who lived and fought during that time.
If any American soldier as depicted in this film were somehow transported back to Mucci's unit in 1945, he would be seen to be an alien from another planet. American soldiers in 1945 did not look, speak, dress or interact the way the actors in this movie do. Maybe this is some comfort to American audiences with short attention spans and even less education (or exposure, even to recent American history), but it left me wondering if the story of this raid will ever be made into a movie for grown-ups.
No American soldiers looked or talked or interacted in 1945 the way these actors portrayed them; they did not line up and sound off like soldiers in a 21st century Army recruiting ad, and they did not have perfect teeth, perfect hair, and perfect Los Angeles non-accented diction or speech patterns straight out of this year's crop of war films and television dramas.
Those islands were hot and dirty and crawling with bugs, and as far as I know there were no dry-cleaning facilities nearby to keep everyone's uniforms so clean and squared away. Chow was not sufficient to build up and maintain the body types we see in the movie, and I'll bet there weren't any gyms or circuit training equipment nearby either - or "juice" to keep these athlete-soldiers so cut-looking. There was lousy food, worse coffee, lots of heat, lots of bugs and plenty of cigarettes.
Soldiers were scrawny, dirty, and scared most of the time, and to say so takes nothing away from their courage and bravery under fire. But it was simply impossible to suspend belief at any time during this movie because elements (or all) of every scene I was able to watch looked and sounded false and forced.
There've been plenty of very good books about this raid and those Rangers, any one of which is a better investment of time and money than The Great Raid.