Posted on 08/10/2005 7:02:08 AM PDT by robowombat
Movie Review: The Great Raid
Here’s my review of The Great Raid for NewsMax. For a Miramax movie, I was surprised by how patriotic and pro-military the film was - and by how positively they depicted Christianity. Jason and I talked with director John Dahl and producer Marty Katz after the screening, and they both expressed tremendous respect for the veterans of the Great Raid on Cabanatuan, and a sincere desire to pay homage to them by depicting their story accurately. John Dahl also spoke emotionally about the fact that his father served in World War II in the Pacific, and that his mother’s cousin died fighting the Japanese. My interview with Marty Katz runs in NewsMax this Thursday. The Great Raid opens this Friday, August 12, and conservatives should go and support it. Here’s my review:
The Great Raid on Cabanatuan is surely one of the most remarkable stories of heroism to emerge out of World War II. 511 American survivors of the horrific Bataan Death March, held as P.O.W.s in a Japanese prison camp in the middle of the Philippines, were rescued from certain death by 121 Army Rangers - most of whom had never seen combat before. Miramax’s “The Great Raid” (opening this Friday, August 12) does full justice to the story.
Heroes.
Director John Dahl ("Rounders") and producers Marty Katz ("Reindeer Games") and Lawrence Bender ("Kill Bill") went to unusual lengths to insure that every aspect of “The Great Raid"’s production was faithful to the historical event. From the genuine WWII footage that opens and closes the film, to the vintage WWII guns the soldiers use, to the tanks that were built from scratch, to the actors who underwent weeks of boot camp in order to experience the conditions soldiers and P.O.W.s lived under - every detail was carefully crafted to be faithful to history. Most importantly, this concern for historical accuracy carries forward to the script and its themes. There are no anachronisms here, no impositions of modern political correctness - the filmmakers wisely decide to trust their material and simply tell the story straight.
The result is the sort of movie that is all too rare in Hollywood today: a stirring, patriotic, pro-American story of heroism, self-sacrifice, and victory over daunting odds. “The Great Raid” is not only fair to our military and fair to America’s tremendous war effort - it is also fair to people of religious faith, with its positive depiction of the Catholic priests and relief workers who risked their lives to aid the Allies through the Filipino Underground.
The first half of the movie follows three intertwining stories that build up to the great raid. In the first storyline, Colonel Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) and Captain Robert Prince (James Franco), stationed with American forces in the Philippines, are given the near-impossible mission of rescuing 511 American P.O.W.s from Camp Cabanatuan before they are executed by the Imperial Japanese. Army intelligence has brought them the news that as American forces have retaken the islands of the Philippines, the Japanese Imperial Army has been executing Allied P.O.W.s before the American army can reach them - and the P.O.W.s at Camp Cabanatuan are next.
Heroine.
In the second storyline, P.O.W.s within Camp Cabanatuan - led by Major Gibson (Joseph Fiennes) - struggle to stay alive despite the illness, torture, and starvation inflicted on them by the Imperial Japanese. A much needed light note in these camp sequences is Marton Csokas’ performance as Captain Redding, a lively reprobate who cajoles and wheedles Major Gibson to stay hopeful - and stay alive. The filmmakers don’t shy away from accurately depicting the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese: the American P.O.W.s are denied food and medicine, their Red Cross packets are withheld from them, they are tortured mercilessly, and prisoners are summarily executed without trial (one sequence, based on fact, shows 150 Americans in Palawan prison camp being herded into air-raid shelters, doused with gasoline, then burned alive). As he deals with the horror and inhumanity around him, the only things that give Major Gibson the will to live are his concern for his fellow P.O.W.s - and his love for a mysterious woman named Margaret.
In the third storyline, American Catholic nurse Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen) risks her life to smuggle food and medicine to the American P.O.W.s in Camp Cabanatuan. Her own husband has died fighting the Japanese, and Margaret vows to stay on in occupied Manila and work with the Filipino Resistance. She is motivated not just by idealism, but also by personal attachment. Margaret is in love with Major Gibson, and by smuggling medicine into the camp she is also getting Gibson the anti-malarial medicine he needs to stay alive. Margaret is aided in her efforts by two Catholic priests and a group of ordinary Filipinos who acquire heroic dimensions in the course of making unimaginable sacrifices fighting the Japanese.
American leadership.
After the slow build-up of the first half of the film, the second half delivers a powerful and moving resolution. Colonel Mucci’s disciplined leadership and Captain Powers’ meticulous planning, with the crucial assistance of Filipino guerrillas, leads the Army Rangers to Camp Cabanatuan. The Great Raid itself is then carried out in a spectacular, perfectly-paced, suspenseful sequence. The action, the sound design, the music, and the special effects are all superb. Every prisoner is rescued, with only two army casualties, and the prison camp and its several hundred guards are completely destroyed.
The film’s conclusion had me in tears. After three long years in captivity, the American P.O.W.s finally begin their journey home. As the long line of P.O.W.s is welcomed by their comrades into the American camp, an American flag waves over them - and an American plane flies overhead. The men all look up and cheer - in the sort of moment that used to be common in Hollywood movies, but is all too rare today. The film then ends with a moving montage of actual WWII footage of the rescued P.O.W.s. The historical Colonel Mucci had brought four cameramen along with him to record the raid, and it’s wonderful to see the real P.O.W.s as they enter the camp, board their ships, and then sail back to San Francisco, where they are received with a tremendous heroes’ welcome.
“The Great Raid” is a wonderful movie, and conservatives should support it. “The Great Raid” follows in the tradition of such classics as “Back to Bataan,” “Objective Burma,” and “Bridge on the River Kwai,” and it’s nice to see Hollywood attempting a movie with this sort of moral clarity today. Now if only Hollywood could have this same sort of moral clarity about the War on Terror. Stories of heroism and victory are going untold today about America’s many successes in Iraq and Afghanistan - and I hope Hollywood doesn’t wait sixty years to tell them. But until the film industry is able to honestly depict the current war we’re in, a historical recreation like the “The Great Raid” will serve as a worthy substitute.
Here are some reviews (mixed):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326905/
What a shame.
So far, it only has a 47% rating, but it's still early for many reviews to come out.
Sounds like a great movie---too bad they haven't really marketed this thing. It's going to bomb. I think they're releasing it at the wrong time of year too. It would probably do better in the winter.
Why did they change the character of Margaret 'High Pockets' Phillips. the American woman, living in Manila as an Italian, who ran Tsubaki Club for the Nips and smuggled meds into the camp while passing on intel to MacArthur in Australia? Her story was told in a movie from the late 40s or early 50s and was highlighted in a number of books about the Philippine resistance. I do not understand how this important character could be changed.
A friend of my parents' was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. He had bouts of mental illness until the day he died, usually triggered by severe emotional distress; the death of his young daughter after being hit by a drunk driver when she was crossing the street, the death of his brother in law in a helicopter crash. He was such a gentle man, otherwise.
The guy who wrote the Book "The Ghost of Bataan" is Abie Abraham who is 93 and lives in Butler, PA. He used to tell us about this period in the war.
According to what I read on IMDB.com, this movie was shot three years ago. It did not say why there was a delay in releasing it.
I hope this film does well at the box office. I plan to see it, despite my ongoing boycott of anything released by Miramax after the military-bashing "Buffalo Soldiers" in 2003. My feeling is that Miramax is releasing "The Great Raid" at this time to try to get red-staters back in the cineplexes.
A number of years ago, as part of a research project, I had occasion to interview and correspond with a number of men who had been prisoners of war at Cabanatuan. These men were, unfortunately, not among those liberated at Cabanatuan, because by the time the raid occurred they had been shipped to prison camps in Japan.
The story of the Japanese prison ships, appropriately known as "hell ships," would, in my humble opinion, make a film worth seeing. The story of the last voyage of the Oryoku Maru in December 1944 would make a movie of its own. Of the more than 1600 P.O.W.s who started the voyage, less than 400 were alive by the time they reached Japan forty-nine days later. Along the way they suffered two ships being sunk by Allied aircraft who did not know that P.O.W.s were on board. (International law requires that conveyances bearing prisoners of war be so marked, but the Japanese did not do that.) The P.O.W.s were starved, beaten, and in some cases, killed deliberately by their captors. The father of entertainers Tom and Dick Smothers, a career army officer, was among those who died on the way to Japan.
Of course, such a movie could never be made in these politically correct times.
Help me here.......Sean Hannity was highly recommending a movie on his radio show yesterday.......is this the one??
Yep, that's the one.
Thanks for sharing that information. I looked back through my files and found that the Argentina Maru was used to transport American prisoners of war (marines and sailors) from Guam to Japan after the island surrendered on 10 December 1941. The Argentina Maru was a luxury liner, but as you might imagine the accommodations for the prisoners were less than luxurious. They were placed in the hold of the ship and given rice with worms in it. The voyage began on 10 January 1942, and the ship reached Japan five days later. There were, fortunately, no casualties among the prisoners. Such was not the case on many later shipments.
I have no doubt that the Argentina Maru was used for prisoner of war transport later in the war, but I haven't been able to locate any more mention of it in my files.
Again, thanks for sharing that information.
I too would like to see a hellship movie but I don't think political correctness is the limiting factor. Rather, the whole experience was simply too horrible in every way to make a good movie.
A couple of corrections. About 550 men survived the three ships to Japan and ~400 of 1620 survived the war. (You can find their names at http://people.tamu.edu/~jwerickson/POW/OMrosterguide.html)
Maj. Smothers survived to Japan but died on a ferry while being transferred from Japan to Manchuria in April 1945.
Thanks for the correction. I went back through my files, and Major Smothers did indeed die of pneumonia in April 1945. You might be interested to know that I corresponded with Major Virgil McCollum, the best friend of Major Smothers. He told me that on the leg of the trip from Formosa to Japan water was very scarce. The guards saw this as a profiteering opportunity, and traded water to the prisoners in exchange for valuables. Major Smothers traded his West Point ring to a guard for two cans of water, and he gave one can to Major McCollum.
You're probably right that the story could not be brought to film. We are fortunatel that some of the survivors put their experiences to paper.
Thanks for your reply and the information about Virgil McCollum and Maj. Smothers. McCollum, like Smothers, was sent to a so-called "hospital" after they arrived in Japan. Of 110 sent there, only 36 survived the war. You may know this, but if not, a deposition by Maj. McCollum is available online:
http://www.oryokumaru.net/amstatements.htm
Perhaps the best description of events at the "Moji Hospital" is from Cecil Peart. His diary can be found here: http://www.loc.gov/vets/stories/pow-japan.html
Many, many thanks for the link to the site. I tried to download the very large Conn roster but finally gave up. I did manage to download the Erickson roster and saw the names of men which whom I corresponded and many other names I encountered in my research.
I would imagine that most, if not all, of these men have passed on by now. I last had contact with one of them in 1977. He was in good health at that time. We spent a very interesting afternoon in which he gave me the story of his experiences as a prisoner of war from the time he was captured, to his voyage on the Oryoku Maru, to liberation. He allowed me to do an audio tape of the interview, and I still have it.
I know all of those guys will be in heaven, because they've already been through hell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.