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Hart's War

Hart's War

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $11.96
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A GREAT MOVIE
Review: ok so u may think that this movie looks really cheesy . THINK AGAIN. if u have a 5.1 surround sound setup this movie is great. Even better if u use a projector or a big screen TV. the acting is great the ploy is even greater. all in all BUY it

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Hogan's Heroes
Review: If you want even one iota of anything approaching realism then forget this movie. Because it has Germans in the movie it, of course, has the obligatory Malmedy Massacre scene along with the Jews being deported on trains scene and the Germans are all ruthless nazis etc, etc. The scene in which the American POWs form the letters "POW" in order to stop a low level air raid is pretty hilarious. The plot is poor and the acting even poorer. As usual for an American film everything explodes in flame: one wonders if American special effects producers have actually ever seen an explosion. The film looks as though it was derived by reading an old style war comic. It is bad. ...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hoblit keeps the proceedings hobbling along
Review: Based on the John Katzenbach novel, for a while HART'S WAR feels like an extended R-rated episode of HOGAN'S HEROES minus the laughs.
Col. William McNamara (Bruce Willis)fights for the civil rights of his men in a POW camp.- as if the Nazis cared about people's rights. He soon concocts a plan to hold a court martial to distract the Nazis while he and Lt. Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell) escape and destroy a German weapons plant.
Directed by Gregory Hoblit, who made PRIMAL FEAR and FALLEN, HART'S WAR is technically well made, but doesn't evoke fond memories of THE GREAT ESCAPE or VON RYAN'S EXPRESS, though admittedly there are a few good explosions here and there. Pity the rest of the movie wasn't explosive.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: No I Didn't Read the Book !
Review: I'm amazed at how many reviews really knocked this awesome film around ! I may not be a war historian or a heavy avid novel reader but I definitely can say this movie had my undivided attention and gut in a knot waiting to see what was going to happen next up to the very end ! The performances by ALL actors were outstanding ;hats off to Colin Farrell and Terence D. Howard who put their best forward ! Willis' character may have seemed one dimensional to some but his role required someone who was stern and dead serious (he was not suppose to be likeable and gung ho as in his Die Hard films... Willis is older and wiser now). And the real character twist was the Nazi comandant of the POW camp who seemed a little laxed in character and not befitting of the stereo typical film Nazi. However, his cruelty and menace was on a more intellectual mind game of chess and manipulation between the POWs concerning a tribunal matter...

Overall, I was extremely pleased with Hart's War...Great movie, great story, great acting.While this may not have been anywhere near Oscar calibre (in my opinion it should have come close to) such as Saving Private Ryan it is filled with intrigue and suspense ! That's good enough for me...

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not bad; could have been better...
Review: ...if the writer stayed truer to the excellent novel. Lt. Scott is a strong character, yet the movie has less time for Scott than it does for developing Bruce Willis' character. They also wasted too much precious time re-inventing the beginning.

Listening to the commentary, one begins to wonder if the second screenwriter even read the novel (there is absolutely no mention of it).

Also, the Bruce Willis "commentary" is forged--they obviously took sound clips from an interview and attempted to splice them into the real commentary between the director and a writer. Nonsense.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Shortchanged by its trailers
Review: HART'S WAR the movie bears more resemblance to HART'S WAR the book than it does to its own trailers.

The ostensible leading role of this film is played by Bruce Willis as Colonel William McNamara, the ranking American officer in a German stalag for Allied prisoners towards the end of WWII. However, the primary character is arguably Lt. Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell), recently captured and interrogated before being deposited in the prison. Under relatively mild coercion by his Wehrmacht captors, Hart had pinpointed a crucial U.S. Army supply dump that was subsequently captured by the Germans during the 1944 Ardennes offensive, so Tommy's self-esteem is at low ebb. In any case, on the basis of Hart's two years of law school, McNamara assigns him to defend Lt. Lincoln Scott (Terence Howard), a Negro fighter pilot recently arrived in the camp and now to be courtmartialed for the murder of a fellow POW, the racist Staff Sgt. Bedford (Cole Hauser).

HART'S WAR the movie is part murder mystery and part courtroom drama. What it definitely isn't, as otherwise implied by its pre-release previews, is a Bruce Willis action flick. Perhaps that's why the film swiftly disappeared from the Big Screen - it was a bit more intelligent than the trailer-targeted audiences could bear.

While Willis plays second fiddle to Farrell, the most intriguing character is that of the German camp commandant, Col. Visser (Marcel Iures), a world-wise veteran wounded in the Great War now engaged in a battle of wills with the no-nonsense West Pointer McNamara. Is the help in case preparation Visser gives young Hart simply because both attended the same American university, or does it stem from a more hidden agenda? And what are those Russian POWs up to at that shoe factory next door? Also effective is Terrence Howard as Scott. At one point in the trial, he describes the freedoms German POWs, who were interned in the Deep South, enjoyed that were denied to the uniformed Tuskegee airmen in training, such as sitting in the front row of theaters or eating at certain diners. His speech is a pointed reminder of the virulent racism that once characterized America's military forces until only relatively recently.

I enjoyed HART'S WAR the movie because it was a reasonably faithful adaptation of the excellent novel, and all the characters were well-played, particularly the fascinating Visser.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pleasing But Improbable War Film!
Review: This is another in a series of recent films that seem to be less interested in plot plausibility than with getting a great ensemble cast together to spin a decent yarn. For me the problems with the plot here really strain the credibility of everything else, and although I liked the performance of all concerned, I found myself impatient at points because it all seemed far too contrived. Having said this, the acting is uniformly good, and I found that to be the one redeeming feature of the film.

Colin Farrell is especially good here, and acting out the title role lends credibility and verve to the film. Likewise, Marcel Lures does a good job convincing us he is indeed an evil and manipulative Camp Commander. Bruce Willis is also terrific as the by-the-book West Point graduate and Prisoner Commander who must decide whether or not to intercede to save Hart from his existential situation. Given his willingness to let one man die for the good of many, the choice he must make is by no means a foregone conclusion.

The action sequences are extremely well choreographed and photographed, and while the plot reels from happenstance to happenstance all too conveniently to be believed, the film is entertaining and intriguing in bringing up social issues one does not ordinarily think about in terms of the Second World War. While this isn't intended as a serious drama, it is a good action flick that will keep you entertained if you don't allow the potboiler plot to get in the way. Enjoy!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: What a nice , war glorifying movie ?!
Review: Some people tryed to call " Black Hawk Down " and " Saving Private Rian " war glorifying movies ? All , what thay showed , was brutality and unhumanity of war .War is about people killing people . But most of them didn,t make the desision to start it . The ones , who did , seating somewere in the office ... or playing golf ... or... We need to go to old ages ! If you call the war - you go first !!!Right there - on the front line !
I ecspected much more from this movie . Bruce Willis ! Most of your movies are very good ! What happen ? This one - LOW 4 stars. This one - a war glorifying movie . Story ? Way too made up , fake . The point ? We are sooo good !? Where is an everadge human factor ? It did look like propaganda movie , strait from the begining . Too bad .
As Hollywood war movie - well made .
As REAL movie - not even close !
Watch it - you will deside .

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Definitely Hart Not Heart
Review: This movie was absolutely dreadful. I really only watched it to see Jonathan Brandis, who wasn't even in it! So that might bias my opinion of the whole film, but oh well.
It did not depict an accurate perspective or scenerio of what a real POW camp would have been like in Germany during WWII.
I thought the whole thing about causing a distraction with a court trial was rediculous. POW's wouldn't be allowed any such privilege in the first place. I mean come on, what rights do prisoners anywhere really have from the inside? Not much.
Every moment of the movie was so inaccurate and just impossible for me to believe.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mediocre
Review: Mediocre -- not bad, not great. Was watchable, though, unlike many war movies that are as bad as the zillion horror copycats. The plot is thin, the climax is okay, there are no real war scenes (except the dogfight and its side effects). The humanity (!) during war was probably better than most -- it is not even permitted in most war movies. The editing is good.


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