2 Stars (out of four)
The story stars off pretty interestingly. In one of Collin Farrell's earlier films, he plays lieutenant Hart, an army officer in WWII who comes from a privileged family. His father is an important senator, so he gets assigned as an intelligence officer in the rear lines straight from law school. But, like most rich, idiotic kids in movies like these, he wants to experience combat (watch Platoon and Glory for more on this) and gets captured by the Germans on a routine trip. After some brief questioning, he is sent to Stalag VI, next to a munitions factory posing as a shoe factory. The officer in charge is Col William McNamara (Bruce Willis), who takes an immediate disliking to Hart, quartering him with the enlisted men instead of the officers. Soon after, two black officers who were Tuskegee airmen join the stalag and are bunked in the same barracks. Since this is 1944, obviously most of the men don't take kindly to this and shortly thereafter kill one of the officers. In what seems to be retaliation, the other officer, Lt Scott (Terrence Howard) is caught in an incident where it looks like he killed one of the men. McNamara then assigns Hart the job of defending him in a court martial, where it seems he's destined to lose.
Hart's War is another one of those films that is desperately trying to be bigger and more profound than it is. What starts off as a pretty darn good military prison drama, a la Stalag 17 or The Great Escape, turns into a fairly by-the-numbers courtroom drama about how badly black people were treated in recent history. I am not suggesting this is a bad topic, it's just that it has been covered so well in other, greater movies like Mississippi Burning, In The Heat of the Night, To Kill A Mockingbird and a Time to Kill just to name a few. At this time, there were a bunch of movies made about the plight of newly-integrated black officers in the military like Men of Honor. I don't know if this was a way of correcting the record of history or not, but this angle sort of comes up unexpectedly in the film and radically changes the tone, and not for the better. There are actually several interesting stories in this movie, but unfortunately it tells none of them particularly well. However, without giving away a key plot twist, it does tie together nicely at the end. There is nothing particularly bad about the film. The performances are good and believable and are interesting at times. But the movie is obviously trying to be more than average, and it sort of fails in that regard.
On a personal note, Terrence Howard is, I believe, one of the more underrated actors in Hollywood. I have never seen him turn in a bad performance, but he keeps choosing roles that are beneath him. He could do so much better. I think he was unfairly dismissed after Iron Man in lieu of Don Cheadle. Nothing against Don, but I think Terrence was a much better fit in the role, and I am still waiting for him to get that big break. He is so good, and so underused, it is almost criminal.
No comments:
Post a Comment