Rating: Summary: Powerful Movie! Review: First of all, I wanted to see Hart's War, because it is one of the few WWII revival films that came out recently, a fresh return to a genre that produced many classics and great entertainment.Having said that, I had no other idea about what the film was about,nor had I read the book, and my ignorance my greatly rewarded by discovering a powerful movie that remained with me long after the credit rolled. This is what I sometimes enjoy most about watching films, having to discover them all by myself, reading no reviews beforehand, and knowing little about it. I will not go on a lot about the plot, since it has been well written about by other reviewers, save to say it is a film about a German POW camp towards the end of the war.The politics, racism, survival instinct that exist among the prisoners go hand in hand with honor,integrity and incredible courage. I am surprised to see that many have compared the film to The Great Escape, something I did not quite see. Yes, there is an escape attempt, and a daring operation, but it not by far the core of the plot! The film is more about these human values that are put under incredible pressure, where some will succumb, some will passively resist, while just a few will abide by an unwavering sense of honor, and duty and face the consequences with dignity. And it is not about war itself, though what little action we see, (the raid on the train station for example,) are very well directed and edited. The movie is first and foremost about acting and excellent actors! Colin Farrell adds lots of vulnerablity to his role, and gives his best performance to date, Bruce Willis sinks his teeth into the meatiest, most three dimensional role he had had for a while, Marcel Iures plays to perfection the German POW commander with a sense of civility of an educated man at times, and the ruthlessness of a Nazi officer at others. But, in my opinion the revelation of the film is Terence Howard!!What a brilliant actor and what a performance! subdued yet full of depth, reflecting the invisible heroes of WWII, the African-Americans who fought bravely for their country, facing impossible odds from everyone! The last ten minutes of the film ,which I will not reveal since it has many shocking twists, are very powerful! I just kept looking, transfixed to the screen, with all my senses glued to the events that unfolded before me. This is by far Gregory Hoblit,(Frequency, Fallen, Primal Fear) best film to date, one that if you give it a chance,forget Great Escape for a minute, and watch it with some kind of ignorance, then it will surely reward you with a movie experience rarely seen these days.
Rating: Summary: an excellent thing. Review: this movie is 75% soldier's story, 15% hogan's heroes and whatever left over percent of whatever your favorite war movie is! well crafted and well acted... gimme a good story and good performances and i dont care where the setting is. yeah... this is well done. this is number 2 on my all time favorite war dramas now... 1. soldier's story... 2. hart's war... 3. glory... 4. black hawk down... 5. i dont know... lemme give this one some thought...anyway... this is an enjoyable flick... i could nit pick a couple of things, but why? i enjoyed it too much to even wanna bother being negative with it. sum.
Rating: Summary: good flick Review: Hart's War is an entertaining movie. It's more or less a remake of The Great Escape (1963), but instead of the comic Escape (a la Hogan's Heroes), Hart's War takes on a more serious, dramatic element (which isn't to belittle the Nazi POW comedy, I personally liked Great Escape more). There are well done performances by Willis and Farrell--very low key--but the truly great performance in this film is Marcel Iures as the Nazi camp commandant. He manages to keep from being a cliche and humanizing what would normally be portrayed as a 'monster.' You even find yourself liking the man. The ending is a bit melodramatic, from the surprise confession to the final scene, but not so much that it completely detracts from the rest of the film It's a well made, well writeen, thouroughly enjoyable film.
Rating: Summary: Two big name actors may not make a film. Review: Make a movie starring two of the hottest men in the business and you have a hit movie? Not exactly. Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell can bring in an audience, but movies that have to do with Germans, Russians or Middle East just are not popular anymore. I was disinterested with the film .Bruce Willis, with all due respect, is almost a natural for this role. He was born in Germany and is half-German in real life. But I am glad he's all American. This disc offers Full Screen and Wide Screen. Special Features are on the Widescreen side. Special Features are ten unrated deleted scenes, Audio Commentary with Bruce Willis, Director Gregory Hoblit and the writer. Another Audio Commentary with the Producer, David Foster, Photo Gallery and Theatrical Trailer.
Rating: Summary: A good premise for a movie, but flawed... Review: This film tells the story of American POW's held in a German prison camp during World War II. In order to facilitate an escape, the leader of the Americans (Bruce Willis) engineers a court martial trial in order to distract the Germans while the POWS escape the camp. That's an interesting premise for a war film, but unfortunately the trial revolves around the racist tendencies of American soldiers. This movie could have been great, but the racist angle added unneeded information into the film. More time should have been spent on the war and prisoner aspect and less on the racial tension.
Rating: Summary: more liberal guilt Review: I should have read the reviews before buying the disc.This film might be of interest to young people who think history is what they had for lunch Yesterday. I am sick and tired of the liberals screaming racist from the roof tops.Its always the evil racist white men, and the nobel black man. Yes in the past we had a lot of racism But that is in the past.No wonder this film bombed at the box office.
Rating: Summary: VERY Slow start, plot thickens; culminates in a good ending Review: I am a tough reviewer. I hardly ever rate anything 5 stars (I have probably only rated 3-4 movies 5 stars), so a 3 is worth seeing to me, but this movie is not on the same level as a movie like "Star Wars", "Shawshank Redemption", or "Prince of Tides". Anyway, this is a good movie. The SLOW start to this movie really detracts from the good story. The makers of the movie should have spent more time developing the two main characters, and less time with trivial scenes that do not add much to the story. There is a weak attempt to throw in some action at the beginning, and I cannot figure out the significance to the story. Also, do not expect this movie to be an action movie. This movie is really more like a courtroom drama, set in a german POW camp during WW II. The marketing of this movie was more along the lines of an action movie, which was a mistake. On a technical note, I found that the DVD dialogue is a little too quiet in comparison to the background noise and soundtrack, etc. Many scenes it is really difficult to hear what the characters are saying, and the fact that some of them speak with german accents makes it even harder to hear correctly. I had to turn up the volume very loundly to hear what they were saying. At first, I thought it was just me, then I watched it again with my wife and mother and they also had trouble hearing the dialogue. All in all, if yiou can make it through a slow start, the story is rewarding and entertaining. It was good enough for me to sit through it twice.
Rating: Summary: What happened to the book? Review: I read the novel and was thoroughly exited about the prospect of seeing it turned into a movie. How dissapointed I was. What was a harrowing tale about racism and a legal battle fought in a a trumped up court martial turned into another Bruce Willis action flic, and not a good one at that. The movie was not true to the book and while this happens a lot in movies (see Enemy at the Gates, nee War of the Rats)in this case it did not improve the story at all and in fact reduced the real story line so much that it was relegated to a delivery device for Bruce's glares and command prescence.
Rating: Summary: Surprisingly good.. Review: I'll admit it; I thought this movie looked terrible when I saw the trailers and had completely forgotten its existance until I saw it cheap on Blockbuster's previously viewed wall one day.. On a whim, I picked it up...All in all, this was a strong movie with great performances by the lead characters. Terrence Howard gives an excellent performance as one of the famous Tuskegee airmen; I hope we will be seeing a lot more of him on the big screen. My only criticism of the movie was that the end felt a little contrived and seemed to go against the grain of Bruce Willis' character; however, that conflict may in fact be the point...
Rating: Summary: Tries to Cover Too Much Review: This overly ambitious movie like so many today tries to cover too many bases all at once. The end result is that it loses itself and the viewer. While impressively produced with accurate equipment, the film suffers from a basic reality check: Allied prisoners were not this well treated by 1945. Having spoken with someone who was in a German POW camp as a GI in late 1944 his description of the conditions were a lot worse than what's shown here. In fact he found this movie to be dead wrong in that regard. If the conditions shown were a year earlier he could have beleived it, but by 1944-45 the Germans were running out of everything and had scant resources to spare for allied POWs. Conditions were therefor a lot worse than shown here. The whole barrack room lawyer court case and racial bit shown is another Hollywood ploy for political correctness in today's movies. God, will we ever be rid of this deadening influence which spoils so many films today. Even Blacks must be getting tired of this by now. But for these detracting elements the movie tries to follow in the footsteps of earlier well known POW epics like "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17". Stick to those for better fare, but this one is fun for comparison.
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