Dull throwback to old war films

Rating: 3/10 (2 February 2009)

They might have got away with this if we had never seen Private Ryan or (especially) Band of Brothers. This is a war film as they made them in the fifties - handsome film actors wearing uniforms, but not seeming like soldiers, people being shot dead without any blood appearing (see especially the scene when white-clad hospital staff are gunned down) and virtually no swearing.
It is desperately badly written, especially at the start: long periods of dull exposition, including the fatal use of dialogue in which characters, for the sake of the audience, tell each other things they already know.
The PoWs are not nearly skinny enough. I know this is a tough one to get even nearly right, but the photos of the time show men who were walking skeletons.
James Franco is terrible. He seems to have the idea that to act a tough guy he has to speak in a droning monotone. He sounds as if he is on a heavy dose of diazepam.
Give this a miss.