'Raid' is Less Than Great

Acting like a big-screen epic but coming across more like a cable TV extravaganza, this movie (directed by John Dahl) is an informative account of one of modern history's boldest and inspiring rescue missions.

In World War II, American forces led a successful mission into a remote corner of the Philippines, where more than 500 prisoners of war had been held near a village called Cabanatuan for three years. They saved the prisoners from their brutal Japanese captors, who had denied them medicine, fed them sparsely and killed POWs without hesitation. As the movie shows, the determined leadership of ailing commanding officer Major Gibson (a gaunt, almost gargoylish Joseph Fiennes) and the secret supplies of medicine smuggled into the camp by nurse Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen) keep the POWs' morale relatively strong.

This is a movie for people more interested in the subject matter than its dramatic presentation. The story, adapted from Hampton Sides's book "Ghost Soldiers" as well as William B. Breuer's "The Great Raid on Cabanatuan," is unnecessarily lengthy. The dialogue is not exactly spit-polish perfect. A central friendship between Gibson and imprisoned Captain Prince (James Franco) is fair to middling. And the central romance (which is actually an unrealized attraction between Gibson and Utinsky) is lame formula indeed. The most touching part of the entire film occurs in the epilogue when we see footage of the real participants after the rescue. In a matter of minutes, this small section touches you in ways the movie just can't muster.

The Great Raid (R, 132 minutes) -- Contains war violence, obscenity and atrocities . Area theaters.