Great Raid [DVD] [2005] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]
Nearly three years after it was filmed, The Great Raid finally appeared as a welcome reminder that good old-fashioned World War II movies never go out of style. While lacking the scale, prestige, and pulse-pounding momentum of Saving Private Ryan, this fact-based war drama benefits from a back-to-basics approach to realism and a rousing rescue climax that more than compensates for the slower passages that precede it. Adapted from the books The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Ghost Soldiers, it chro
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Sore Losers [VHS]
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Prisoners of Miramax,
Some films just get made simply because so much time and money has been wasted developing them that it almost seems unthinkable not to make them even though everyone at the studio has long since lost interest. Case in point The Great Raid, one of Miramax’s infamous shelf-hoggers. Initially intended as a Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise vehicle before they got a better offer from the Martians, it finally went before the cameras in Australia and China in 2002 with the less than A-list combo of director John Dahl and an underpowered cast headed by Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes and Connie Nielson only for Harvey Scissorhands to spend three years tinkering with the cut (Disney later claimed that, like the 45 other films still on the shelf at the time they parted company, the Weinsteins shelved it so it wouldn’t affect their performance-related bonus and severance pay), by which time it had cost some $70m or more. Junked in a few theatres to no discernible business in their let’s-wreck-the-joint-for-the-new-management spree when they started their new company, it never made it across the Atlantic, quietly sneaking out onto DVD when no-one was looking.
While it’s easy to see why Spielberg and Cruise bailed – not enough drama, no big star role – the end result certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Based on the most successful rescue mission in US military history, when a group of untested Rangers rescued 500 prisoners of war in Cabanatuan in the Philippines before their Japanese captors could kill them, it’s the kind of film you’re surprised wasn’t made decades ago. Even the casting of Fiennes seems strangely reminiscent of James Fox (an actor his career seems to be aping more and more lately) in the undervalued King Rat and even if the film is never quite as stark, it surprisingly avoids historical revisionism or excuses for the Japanese. The opening sequence, though not excessively gory, is genuinely shocking in its callousness, and unlike Pearl Harbor the film makes no attempt to water down the brutality of the Japanese Army to those they deemed inferior races, Allied prisoners and Filipino civilians alike: it’s hard to see this selling many tickets in Japan.
Curiously its biggest problem is its historical accuracy: the determination to (for the most part) avoid phoney heroics unfortunately isn’t matched by an ability to make the long march to the camp particularly dramatic, the Rangers themselves barely registering as characters for much of the movie. At times this puts more weight on the prison camp sequences and a subplot with Connie Nielson’s doctor smuggling drugs to the prisoners through the local underground (true but playing more like demographic-inspired fiction at times) than they can bear, with much of the middle of the film sagging, especially compared to the surprisingly powerful ending. As with most P.O.W. films, the actors look too healthy despite their best efforts and the desaturated photography has become too much of a war movie cliché to impress anymore, but there’s a sincerity to the film and a pride in what these men did that carries it over many of its rough patches: it’s hard not to feel moved by the lengthy archive footage of the real liberated prisoners and their rescuers at the end (the NTSC Region 1 2-disc director’s cut DVD also includes a couple of powerful documentaries with veterans, but the UK single-disc release only offers deleted scenes). One niggle though: while most of the cast make credible enough soldiers, filmmakers really should stop casting Dale Dye as officers – he may be the only real soldier in the picture, but he never convinces as one on screen and his cameos are starting to get as annoyingly gratuitous as Michael G. Wilson’s in the Bond films.
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|Great War Movie,
I’m surprised that some people found this movie wooden,I couldn’t fault it. Its a big budget war movie that will be appreciated by anyone who likes war movies. The film, which is based on actual events, is well shot and action packed from start to finish. The WW2 Veterans of this actual raid advised on this movie and this film does those guys proud. Best war film of 2006.
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|A War Film Well Worth Watching,
Surprisingly well made and well acted. Almost worth 4 stars. Based on a true story this movie begins with well-chosen genuine film footage that effectively sets the scene. A shocking atrocity by Japanese troops follows. The main story then concerns the mission of a highly trained but untested US Ranger unit to rescue American POWs in the Phillipines from Japanese kempeitai (military police) troops who are preparing to massacre them. The action, whilst not resorting to cutting edge special effects, displays integrity and more than a nod towards realistic military drills. The scenes set in occupied Manila are very well done, with run-down buildings, crowds, trams, rain-slick streets and the feel of a real city under occupation rather than a set. It would have been very easy to turn this into a parody but the makers have worked hard to maintain a genuinely gritty feel to the whole screenplay. The generous depiction of Filipino guerillas and their resistance under the noses of the Japanese is also refreshing in an American film. Armed Filipino guerillas support the Rangers stoutly whilst a network of sympathetic civilians smuggle medicines into the POW camp at great peril to themselves and their families. The ending, intercut with more genuine film footage of the actual personalities portrayed in the film, is superbly handled and very moving. This is a much better film than ‘Black Book’ but far less well known – which is a pity. The historical interest is high, whilst the drama and action are accomplished. Good war film about a less well known episode that deserves to be seen. Recommended.
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|The real sore losers are those who actually watch this film,
There’s not much I can say about The Sore Losers except to stress the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever; the very thought of any part of this movie making the least bit of sense never even occurred to writer/director/producer John Michael McCarthy. This alien from who knows where named Blackie was sent to Earth by “the elders” in the 1950s to kill twelve beatniks, but his allotted time ran out with three victims left to go. The elders brought him back and confined him somehow, but after forty-something years he has escaped and has come back to finish the job. He hooks up with a couple of associates, a comic book freak who looks like Prince and a brutal redhead of a woman, but the trio makes the mistake of killing one too many people. Blackie’s in trouble again, but the elders give life back to the redhead’s decomposing mother and tell Blackie to kill a certain individual if he wants to be granted a safe return home. He meets another alien like him stranded on earth and is told that the elders are lying to him. To kill or not kill the intended victim becomes the question.
This movie never sits still; scenes change, characters change and morph, angelic beings with giant snakes pop up, people die, don’t die, and “undie,” all without a moment’s notice and often in rapid succession. Even God and Satan aren’t safe from the awful clutches of this movie, as they too get thrown into the illogical mix. Comic books are inexplicably important, and hippies are seemingly public enemy number one. I won’t even try to describe this movie any more than this because I can’t and, more importantly, because it simply isn’t worth it. If this movie were a human being, it would be confined in a straitjacket and stuck in a maximum security mental asylum for the rest of its life. I guess I can begrudgingly credit the ending with what might be called a very tiny bit of a philosophical ending, but in doing so I am being incredibly generous to a movie that goes far out of its way to make sure no one can possibly understand the first thing about it.
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|for hardcore b-movie fans only,
Betty Page meets “the Cramps” on a weird b-movie roadtrip.
Plot:
After 42 years “Blackie” returns back on earth to finish a once-not-completed mission, which means to kill 12 people (noone more – noone less).
Enjoy Blackie and his friends doing a nice greasy-latex-rock’n’roll-“frag”-out through Memphis and the Northeastern Mississippi territory.
Do I need to say, that, as the The ‘FBI’ from outer space shows by, the trouble are only about to begin?
Fazit:
I dig this movie a lot! A very funny, gory, sexy and unusual story, far away from mainstream.
Be advised that the UK version has the baddest picture quality I can think of. Well, I knew that and bought this goody anyway.
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