The Great Raid is a surprisingly effective war film that manages to work despite stereotypical characters and a well worn premise

Rating: 7/10 (24 August 2005)

The Great Raid ***
Here's a piece of advice when watching The Great Raid. Try and forget the flagrant jingoism and stereotypical characterizations on display and enjoy it for what it is.
And that is a good, old-fashioned war picture that, minus the violence, could easily have been made in the 1950s and would have been hailed as "a crackling, flagwaving war programmer".
Inspired by a true story, The Great Raid recounts what is recognized as the biggest single U.S. military rescue mission in history. A total of 511 American captives were rescued from a brutal Japanese POW camp in the Philippines following a highly coordinated surprise raid by U.S and local rebellion forces.
A narrated opening introduces us to the history of the U.S.-Japanese conflict. We then witness first hand the brutality of the Japanese army as they are instructed to eliminate all U.S prisoners as allied forces gain a foothold on the island.
The movie then spends its time intercutting between the plight of the POWs in the camp (led by Joseph Fiennes) and their abuse at the hands of their captors, and the efforts of a steely sergeant and captain (Benjamin Bratt and James Franco) to conduct a daring, 120-man rescue mission to get them out.
Despite the ultimate predictability of the story, it's definitely never boring. That's because director John Dahl (Rounders) wastes little time with extraneous character scenes and pares the story to its gritty essentials. He knows that most of us will have traveled this road before, and focuses on keeping the pacing tight and the suspense palpable.
There's a surprisingly strong female character played by Connie Nielson, as a foreign nurse helping to smuggle medicine into the camp. This forms the basis of an interesting, tense subplot that fits nicely into the main story and actually could have made a good little movie in itself.
There are a few missteps along the way though. The Japanese soldiers are portrayed as one dimensional, sadistic bullies whose sole purpose is to brutalize prisoners and play catch with American bullets. While I wasn't looking for richly developed characters a la Bridge on the River Kwai, the screenwriters could have at least have had one sympathetic Japanse character to identify with.
And with a movie with so many small roles, apart from the main characters it's hard to identify who's who, often resulting in audience whispers of "pssst...who's he again?".
But when the raid finally happens, it's a supremely well executed, adrenaline pumping sequence that only Hollywood can pull off with such thunderous, technical bravado.
When all is said and done, and the raid is over, the movie concludes with some emotional documentary footage of the real-life soldiers and prisoners who took part in the raid taken in the aftermath. In some ways this was more fascinating to watch than the dramatic re-enactment we've just witnessed. I guess it just reinforces the notion that while the real-life mission and the men who took part truly were great, this movie version is merely good.