Let's make things clear: All POW dramas are good – even when they're not. The rules are always the same: The prisoners must maintain national pride and military rank – it's their form of civil rebellion. It's also their duty to escape – usually by tunnel or some other ploy. And the camp commandant (usually a hissable Nazi) must be part evil but also intelligent and sensitive enough to respect, and even secretly admire, his counterpart – usually, the leader among the prisoners.
"Hart's War," starring Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, follows all these rules, which is why you'll get the enjoyable basic minimum. But not a whit more.
Colin Farrell and Bruce Willis star in "Hart's War."
(MGM)
|
|
There is an interesting wrinkle, however: the pre-civil rights movement atmosphere among the American prisoners. At a POW camp in Nazi Germany, a racist American prisoner, Pvt. Bedford (Cole Hauser), is murdered. The logical suspect is Lt. Lincoln Scott (Terrence Dashon Howard), a black American officer who had been the object of Bedford's unremitting taunts.
The bemused German camp commander (Marcel Iures) allows an American-style court martial, conducted by prisoners' leader and career officer Col. William McNamara (Willis). Hart (Farrell), another officer, is appointed to represent Scott. It's an intriguing notion: the idea of Americans judging each other (with the irony that African Americans are treated just as badly by white Americans as Nazis). But "Hart's War" isn't up to its ambitious, overloaded scenario. It becomes heavy-handed and, closer to the end, incredibly hokey. But if you just want the joy of POW dramas, the movie doesn't fail.
HART'S WAR (R, 125 minutes) – Contains war violence, racial epithets and some obscenity. Area theaters.
