Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has matured as an auteur even if he's as prone as ever to creating funny-ha-ha sequences of joyous cinematic revelry just for the sport of it. Tarantino deploys virtuosic use of character, dialogue, suspense, and surprise in each of this film's five chapters. A tense opening sequence titled "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France" sets the filmmaker's darkly comic yet heavily dramatic tone with Nazi Colonel Hans Landa's (diabolically played by the incomparable Christoph Waltz who won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance)—and his small group of soldiers— visit to a remote farmhouse inhabited by dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) and his three daughters. The objective, naturally, is to search for Jews whom LaPadite may be hiding. A polite battle of wits and willpower between the two adversaries plays out with a savory drama that is astounding for its layers of subtext, precise execution, and originality. The following chapter introduces Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine (played with gusto by Brad Pitt), who indoctrinates his elite squad of Nazi scalpers (Aldo is part Apache Indian) with a speech spun of richly-humored narrative gold. The remaining chapters--each reflecting a different film genre-- build on one another toward a new kind of World War II fantasy climax that is cathartic as it is bittersweet for its inevitable collateral damage.

Rated R. 152 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Brothers

Jim Sheridan's muted remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 film with the same title is an imperfect but well-acted examination of the after-effects of a traumatic experience in the war in Afghanistan. Tobey Maguire plays Captain Sam Cahill, a loving family man who begins a second tour of duty., He leaves behind his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and their two young daughters. At the same time Sam's brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is released from prison after serving a stretch for bank robbery. The film's thematic centerpiece act of brutality relays the vicious cycle of war that the American government perpetrates on its own people. Sam Shepherd is squandered with a script that hamstrings his role as military father to Sam and Tommy. Natalie Portman gives a delicate performance as Sam's tortured wife. As Sam, Tobey Maguire undergoes a complete transformation into a mentally traumatized individual, but his excellent performance isn't adequately supported by David Benioff's sporadically amateurish script.

Rated R. (104 mins.) (C+) (Two Stars)

Red Cliff

John Woo delivers on "Red Cliff's" reputation as the most expensive Chinese-language film ever made. "Red Cliff" is a mesmerizing war epic that concentrates on ancient techniques of military strategy as played out on a grand stage. Set in 208 AD, the 131-minute film hits the ground running as general Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) asserts his power over the Han Emperor Xian (Wang Ning), leading his troops south to conquer regional warlords Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen). But Liu Bei has a secret weapon: a skilled advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose brilliant counsel makes for some dramatic plot twists. The ensemble of actors including Vicki Zhao and Tony Leung Chiu-wai give stellar performances in a lush piece of mythic history. The balance of natural beauty, complex characters, wartime drama, and epic scale, makes "Red Cliff" a must-see movie. And you'll have something to look forward to afterward: the second half of the two-part series ("The Battle of Red Cliff") comes out in January.

Rated R. 148 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has matured as an auteur even if he's as prone as ever to creating funny-ha-ha sequences of joyous cinematic revelry just for the sport of it. He deploys virtuosic use of character, dialogue, suspense, and surprise in each of this film's five chapters. A tense opening sequence sets Tarantino's darkly comic yet heavily dramatic tone with Nazi Colonel Hans Landa's (diabolically played by the incomparable Christoph Waltz)—and his small group of soldiers— visit to a remote farmhouse inhabited by dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) and his three daughters. The objective, naturally, is to search for Jews whom LaPadite may be hiding. A polite battle of wits and willpower between the two adversaries plays out with a savory cinematic drama that is astounding in its precise execution. The following chapter introduces Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine (played with gusto by Brad Pitt), who indoctrinates his elite squad of Nazi scalpers with a speech spun of richly-humored narrative gold. The following four chapters build on one another toward a new kind of World War II fantasy climax that is cathartic as it is bittersweet for its inevitable collateral damage. Loosely inspired by Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 B movie of the same title, "Inglourious Basterds" (purposely misspelled) is a five-course meal created by one of the world's finest chefs. Not since Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" has anyone made a film that's as much fun. Tarantino masterfully employs an economy of action, thought, and movement that takes you on a wartime journey you will never want to end. Every film that Quentin Tarantino makes is a cinematic event of mammoth proportions, and this one is no different. It lives up to the director's brilliant international reputation, and accordingly so does he. "Inglourious Basterds" is Tarantino's best work yet.
Rated R. 152 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

The Messenger (First Look Review)

Director/co-writer Oren Moverman's erratic discussion of the emotional fallout from American soldiers dying in the Iraq war depends on the estimable talents of Ben Foster as wounded war hero Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery, whose final three months of duty involves notifying family members of a soldier's death. Sgt Montgomery lives an impoverished solitary life, working on-call under Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), whose own war experiences have left deep psychological scars. The story takes on a soul-crushing repetitive reality as the uniformed soldiers of the Casualty Notification Office carry out their duties with by-the-book instructions that don't always allow for the unpredictable reaction of the strangers they meet under emotionally unstable conditions. The film affords Woody Harrelson an opportunity to turn in some of his best career work with a complex character that is empathetic as he is pathetic. Moveman struggles with tempo and structure, leading up to an unsatisfying ending that fails to pin down the film's limited thematic arc. Nonetheless, "The Messenger" is worth the price of admission if only to see Ben Foster's gut-wrenching monologue about the violent battle that branded Will Montgomery a "war hero." Symptomatically, the film touches on the shell-shocked mood of a country locked in a pretentious war where lives, lost and ruined, are swept under the carpet like so much sawdust by a corporate-controlled government and media.
Rated R. 107 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Flame & Citron

Ole Christian Madsen's unpredictable Danish resistance war film winds and twists through the violent public assassinations and equally volatile private lives of its charismatic freedom fighters Flammen AKA Bent (Thure Lindhardt) and Citronen AKA Jorgen (Mads Mikkelsen). Fitting nicely against Verhoeven's "Black Book," "Flame & Citron" covers the careers of its code-named resistance fighters who served in an elite cell as daring assassins of Danish collaborators and Nazi officials during WWII. Although separated in age by more than ten years, the duo share an abiding friendship that compensates for their differences of temperament. Flammen, so named for his unmistakable red hair, is the more fearless of the two but is not as unflappable as he would like to believe. His weakness for a woman of dubious background exacts a heavy toll. Citronen, however, has more to prove because he has chosen to fight rather than care for his needy wife and daughter. The persuasive force of the film falls squarely on Lindhardt's and Mikkelsen's shoulders as experienced actors whose gifts for sustaining layers of motivational subtext is utterly satisfying. It's intriguing to consider that under modern conditions the two heroes would be Iraqi, and the Nazis would be American.
Not Rated. 132 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

The Hurt Locker

Director Kathryn Bigelow's powerful Iraq war drama begins with the premise that "war is a drug," and proves that postulate with a thoughtful character study of Staff Sergeant William James, a bomb specialist played by Jeremy Renner. As part of a U.S. military Explosive Ordinance Disposal team stationed in Bagdad, Sergeant Williams takes a cavalier approach to diffusing roadside, and otherwise installed, explosives. He's not quite suicidal, but Williams' unconventional fearlessness severely worries other members of his team, to the point that they imagine it might be better if he weren't around. Former embedded journalist Mark Boal's script takes an episodic form to transmit the heightened degree of stress that these type of soldiers endure on a moment-by-moment basis. The film supports the idea that extended exposure to certain kinds of experiences have the effect of either galvanizing a participant or breaking them, if they are fortunate enough to survive. In WWII, war was hell, in Viet Nam it was numbed by drugs, but in today's version of extreme conflict, war is the drug. Supporting the troops is not what you think.  
Rated R. 130 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

The Battle Of Algiers (Classic Film Pick)

Gillo Pontecorvo’s groundbreaking 1965 documentary styled black-and-white thriller about the Algerian resistance effort to overthrow the French Colonial Government occupation circa 1957 is a suspenseful and sophisticated political allegory that speaks eloquently to the current American military occupation of Iraq. “The Battle of Algiers” traces the potent terrorist efforts of a small group of revolutionaries as they battle against the French military led by a former French Resistance fighter (Jean Martin). Pontecorvo cast non-professional actors and used the real leader of the Algerian revolutionaries (Yacef Saadi) to play himself. “The Battle Of Algiers,” which was banned in France for some time, is a one of a kind masterpiece of pure cinema that you will never forget. It is further proof that those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 
Not Rated 117 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Das Boot (Classic Film Pick)

German-born director Wolfgang Perersen might just as well have made only one film in his career because his co-written adaptation of Lothar Buchheim's novel, about the real experiences of a WWII German U-boat crew, is a perfect masterpiece of wartime suspense. Inside the thick hull of their creaking U-96 submarine, the Captain (Jürgen Prochnow) fearlessly leads his ship through the Battle of the Atlantic. The underwater ship dodges depth charges, braves a fierce storm, narrowly escapes a collision with another sub, and is forced to sit at the bottom of the ocean after being attacked by enemy bombers. And there's more. This is a war film in which the brutal conditions of the characters' circumstance blurs the lines between allied or enemy forces. We are with the men inside their giant iron casket. "Das Boot" is absolutlely a big screen film that plays better in the German version with English subtitles rather than the dubbed version. It is unlike any other war film in that it confines the audience in a confined submarine where we digest the fear and panic of the human beings on screen. In short, "Das Boot" is a religious experience.
Rated R. Original uncut version: 330 minutes. (A+)

Ashes and Diamonds (Classic Film Pick)

Based on the 1948 novel by Jerzy Andrzejewski, the story takes place on May 8, 1945, the last day of WWII in Europe when two members of Poland's nationalistic underground Home Army aim to overthrow the New Communist District Secretary. Actor Zbigniew Cybulski came to be known as the James Dean of Poland for the character of Maciek assigned to assassinate the insurgent Communist leader. "Ashes and Diamonds" finished Wadja's war film trilogy with a flourish. Beautifully filmed and percolating with the futility of violence "Ashes and Diamonds" is a treasure of Polish cinema from a master filmmaker.

(A+) (Five Stars)

The Damned (Classic Film Pick)

The first of Luchino Visconti's "German Trilogy" of films that included "Death in Venice" and "Ludwig" is set in high society Germany during the early '30s where the Essenbecks, an industrialist family--modeled after the Krupp family's steel production company--are brought down and taken over by the Nazis after the infamous Reichstag fire. The  Essenbecks' anti-Nazi patriarch Baron Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals) is murdered by the SS, and his company's like-minded vice president Herbert Thallmann (Umberto Orsini) is indicted for the crime before escaping the from Gestapo that soon incarcerates his wife (Charlotte Rampling) and children at Dachau. Visconti stylishly captures the frenzied debauchery and violence that the Nazis employed throughout the era, including the Night of the Long Knives wherein Hitler's execution squads massacred his political enemies--the paramilitary Brownshirts known as the SA. Written by Visonti, with Enrico Medioli and Nicola Badalucco, "The Damned" (1969) is an incendiary precursor to Nazi era films like Liliana Cavani's "The Night Porter" (1974), Tinto Brass's "Salon Kitty" (1976), and even the musical play and film "Cabaret." By boldly confronting the psycho-sexual depravity of the Nazi mindset, all the way through to is inevitable incestuous nature, Visconti creates a specific cinematic vernacular for viewing and discussing Hitler's manic ideology. That Visconti's iconic vision became a cinematic touchstone for other influential filmmakers is a testament to the Italian director's power as a storyteller and conduit of historical information.   

Black Hawk Down

Set during a 1993 Mogadishu capture mission of Somalia's Mohamed Farrah Aidid by an elite group of US soldiers, "Black Hawk Down" is a precise vision of how little war has changed in spite of America's high-tech equipment and extensive vocabulary of modern tactics. For all of its gritty super-war-action, the film's characters remain flat, and its narcissistically patriotic ending fails to mitigate the military incompetence on display. Director Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") teams up with blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Armageddon") to adapt Mark Bowden's novel of the same name into a volatile mix of blood, adrenaline, and testosterone.  We hear the soldiers in "Black Hawk Down" using a private lingo to rev up their gung-ho attitude to go kill or be killed. It's an abbreviation of the "HooHa" that Pacino's character used in "Sea of Love." But here it sounds more like something Stiv Bators (former "Lords of the New Church" singer) would have yelled out in the middle of a song that went, "open your eyes, see the lies right in front of ya."
Rated R. 144 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Forbidden Games (Classic Film Pick)

Rene Clement's adaptation of Francois Boyer's novel is an exquisitely unsentimental movie about the corruptive effect of war on children. After her parents are killed beside her in an air raid, five-year-old Paulette (played by Brigitte Fossey) carries her dead dog with her as she attempts to reenact of the deaths that have traumatized her. Michel (Georges Poujouly), a young peasant boy, discovers Paulette wandering in the countryside and convinces his family to take her in. Soon, Paulette has Michel stealing crucifies and killing animals for her private animal cemetery, for which she wishes to include human corpses. "Forbidden Games" caused a scandal when it was released in 1952 because it co-opted a fictional story and embellished it with the recent tragedy of war. The film is every bit as controversial today for its transparently passionate view of the permanent damage that war inflicts on its youngest survivors.

Pearl Harbor

At three hours, this Jerry Bruckheimer/ Michael Bay movie is far more egotistical than epic (it reportedly cost $135 million dollars to make).  With a protracted '40s style love story severely lacking in lust, clunking dialogue that floats around like empty cartoon bubbles, and plot holes so big you could fly a B-52 through them, "Pearl Harbor" zips through clichés like a chainsaw ripping through a stack of Cliff's Notes. Josh Hartnett is a welcome surprise, as pilot Danny Walker, not only does he look like a young Tommy Lee Jones, but Hartnett delivers Jones' brand of wounded charisma. Harnett gives the movie its most engaging character apart from Ewen Bremner's ("Trainspotting") scene stealing as Red, a stuttering pilot with a heroic heart. The devastating scenes that make up the attack on Pearl Harbor are beautifully executed and give the movie a tasteful realization of the brutal horror of the siege without succumbing to the gore fest that Steven Spielberg committed with "Saving Private Ryan." Nonetheless, the story feels pieced together as with a confined sub-plot about a black cook, played by Cuba Gooding Jr.
Rated PG-13. 183 mins.(C-) (Two Stars)
   

Valkyrie

For its significance as the first film about the actual events around an assassination attempt on Hitler led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), "Valkyrie" is an anachronistic movie that wants to be less than it should be. After losing his left eye, two fingers on his left hand, and his right hand in an allied aerial attack, von Stauffenberg turns against Hitler along with an elite group of military conspirators seeking to enact a coup fired by Hitler's death. Accents are all over the place for would-be German officers played by Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp who like the under-used Eddie Izzard come at their roles with conviction. Director Bryan Singer's vision of an old-fashioned Hollywood thriller redone, with style and panache, falls short on both accounts. There's no one in the movie to empathize with, and story goes by like a checklist. Perhaps if the actors all spoke in German, with English subtitles, then the movie might have been more entertaining.

Rated PG-13. 120 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Strayed (Les Egares)

Andre Techine, maestro of the French New Wave directors, tells a seductively simple story of survival set on the outskirts of German occupied Paris in June of 1940. Odile (Emmanuelle Beart - "Mission Impossible") and her two children flee into the vacant French countryside when German Stukas strafe their convoy heading south. As refugees in their own country, Odile and her children, aged seven and twelve, take up residence in an abandoned country house with the aid of a Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), a strange teenage boy they meet in the woods. As Odile attempts to block out unknown dangers by enforcing order in the house, her romantic attention turns to the mysterious boy that at turns protects or endangers her and her children.
Not Rated 95 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Divided We Fall

Czech director Jan Hrebejk received an Academy Award nomination for his heartfelt movie that observes the volatile conditions, desires, and moral obligations pressing on four people attempting to survive the Nazi occupation of their small Czech town. Because most of the action takes place between a husband and wife, their concealed Jewish house guest, and a former colleague who is a Nazi collaborator, the movie has the intimacy of a play, but retains a greater scope of the war around them through Hrebejk’s tempered command of cinema language. At times painfully suspenseful and claustrophobic, "Divided We Fall" is a vital reminder of the kinds of dramatic choices made by millions of peopled victimized by Nazis and traitors in a war that was fought at all costs.
Rated PG-13. 122 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Starship Troopers (Classic Film Pick)

Paul Verhoeven's cynical satire of American politics is loosely based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 science fiction novel which went on to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960. Verhoeven's outrageous sci-fi epic piles on layers of commentary about the nature of militarization in a story about young and lovely high school graduates going off to war against invading giant arachnid bugs from the planet of Kelndathu. In the film's near future, American society has fully integrated political indoctrination through a constant barrage of propaganda to effect its fascist motives. In a world where "Service guarantees citizenship," even if the rich don't have to be citizens, every kid wants to do a great job for the Fatherland--and die! "Starship Troopers" is a canny war satire that outshines even Kubrick's great film "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
Rated R. 130 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Come and See (Classic Film Pick)

Stalingrad-born Elem Klimov's "Come and See" is a undiluted expression of cinematic poetry in the service of an unspeakably turbulent anti-war narrative about the 628 Byelorussian Villages burnt to the ground along with their inhabitants by the Nazis during WWII. The film is a disorienting vision of hell on Earth that would pale Hieronymus Bosch's most gruesome compositions. An electricity-buzzing stench of human death and social decay hangs over the remarkable picture's constant volley between neo-realistic, formal, and documentary styles that take the viewer on quick descent into the existential madness of war through the eyes of its fourteen-year-old peasant protagonist Florya. Alexei Kravchenko's phenomenal performance as Florya is of such an enormous dramatic magnitude that he physically transforms the audience.
Not Rated. 142 mins. (A+ (Five Stars)

Defiance

Edward Zwick's WWII era Belarus is the same era and location as Elem Klimov's Belarus war drama "Come and See" except that "" wears its heart on its sleeve where Klimov's superior film took a more poetic yet realistic approach. Three brothers, an avenger-turned-passivist Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and younger Asael (Jamie Bell) go into hiding inside the thick forests of Belarus with an ever-growing group of Holocaust refugee partisans. Tuvia has a crisis of faith about the effects of revenge after murdering his father's assassin, and Zus comes to doubt Tuvia's ability to lead before breaking away to start his own band of freedom fighters. Historian Nechama Tec's factual book "Defiance: The Story of the Bielski Partisans" provides the basis for an underwhelming war film done in by miscalculated episodes of violence and some exceptionally inept dialogue. Director of photography Eduardo Serra's shaky camera takes its toll, along with James Newton's all-too-obvious musical score.

(Paramount Vantage) Rated R. 136 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee boxes outside of his directorial weight-class with a war story bogged down by ham-handed smacks of magical realism and over-pronounced examples of racial prejudice. Lee’s muddle of inappropriate camera angles, overemphasized exposition, and overall inability to get beyond the scope of the source material makes the cinematic garment seem like it was made with a shortage of fabric. James McBride’s script, based on his own novel, proves problematic in its attempt to create a believable fictionalized account of the experiences of a group of four Buffalo Soldiers (African-American servicemen) fighting in the 92^nd Infantry Division in Tuscany, Italy between August 1944 and November of 1945. The troop survive crossing a shallow river into enemy territory where they remain trapped with a group of Italian locals, unaided by their unit’s white commander who refuses to send in reinforcements because he doesn’t believe their reported location. The group’s largest soldier Sam (Omar Benson Miller) has a knack for lugging around heavy things, like a decapitated statue head, and a lost little Italian boy named Angelo who he believes will keep his squad safe from harm. This is a war movie that’s all over the place. Its performances range from disappointing to mediocre in an overlong film that’s more likely to give you a headache than any sense of thematic resolve.

(Touchstone Pictures) Rated R. 145 mins. (C-)

Rescue Dawn

Werner Herzog's sensational narrative version of the story he told in his acclaimed 1997 documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," about former real-life Navy pilot Dieter Dengler, is a wartime escape movie to top all others. Set in a thick Laotian jungle, Dieter (Christian Bale) becomes the only American to ever break out of a POW camp during the Vietnamese War thanks to his naive indomitable spirit and mental fortitude. Jeremy Davies ("Saving Private Ryan") gives a riveting performance as one of Dieter's emaciated fellow prisoners, but it's Steve Zahn that surprises with what is arguably his first real acting job, and man is he great. Herzog is back with a vengeance, and this movie is incredible.

Rated PG-13. 125 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

300

Apart from its pro-war propaganda, that comes in the form of unrelenting voice-over narration, "300" is a dog of a movie where cookie-cutter CGI battle scenes show thirty actors pretending to fight to the death. Adapted from Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel, "300" is based on the famous battle of Thermopylae wherein Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 career soldiers held off hundreds of thousands of Persian troops. Director Zack Snyder ("Dawn of the Dead"- 2004) pushes into the realm of camp with buff soldiers wearing leather briefs that make them look like male strippers at the end of their act. The evil Persian King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) provides a camp coup de grace with plucked eyebrows, a megaphone voice and lots of gold chains to solidify Snyder’s torpid war porn mini epic.

Rated R. 117 mins. (D) (One Star)

Flyboys

Director Tony Bill’s "Flyboys" plays like a poor CGI relation to Howard Hughes' superior "Hell’s Angels." James Franco plays Blaine Rawlings, a Texas cowpoke that takes off for France to defend against the Germans during WWI. Blaine gets a crash course as a fighter pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille Squadron of the French Air Service before becoming distracted from his military duties by local farm girl Lucienne (Jennifer Decker). Blaine’s flying skills improve much faster than his command of the French language as his fellow pilots are gradually shot down during the film’s interminable dog fight sequences that repeat at regular intervals. "Flyboys" is a fluffy war movie that regales a brand of ‘civilized’ warfare that no longer exists and that has no bearing on the way ‘wars’ are fought today. The characters, although based on real life people, are one-dimensional stereotypes that exist for the sole purpose of presenting indistinguishable flesh-and-blood pilots for superabundant air battles.

Rated PG-13. 139 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Jarhead

Director Sam Mendes delivers a full-blooded rendering of Marine Anthony Swofford’s unvarnished meditation on war with a theatrically bound story that could work well as a stage play. With a script version (by screenwriter William Broyles Jr.) based on Swofford’s book, Mendes apprehends the character driven motivations of confusion, boredom, fear and self-loathing that torment a group of ‘every-soldiers’ waiting for months in the Arabian desert for the Gulf War to begin so they can kill something, anything. "Jarhead" is the most unconventional anti-war film ever made because it candidly reveals the mental condition and attitudes of its participants without ever fetishizing or glamorizing violence. Practically all of the brutality we witness is of a psychological nature. ‘Once you go to war -- you will always be at war,’ is the clear message of this brilliant film.

Rated R. 115 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

The Great Raid

"The Great Raid" is director John Dahl's competent, if prosaic, telling of a true war story (the great raid on Cabanatuan) that occurred in the Philippines in 1945 in which the 6th Ranger Battalion undertook a mission to rescue more than 500 American prisoners-of-war from a Japanese POW camp. Benjamin Bratt gives a convincing performance as Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci who oversees the Battalion's able-minded Captain Robert Prince (well played by James Franco). Joseph Fiennes and Marton Csokas swing for the fences in their roles as desperate prisoners of the Japanese military. Undeveloped secondary characters and awkward pacing thwarts the movie from achieving its '60s war film ethos similar to "The Great Escape."

Rated R, 132 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)