Review: The Great Raid

Rated R | 132 mins

IMDB Info

Well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. When I first heard the buzz that The Great Raid was a pro-America, pro-military movie, I was very excited for it. It was what the movie-going public needed, as far as I was concerned: an exhilarating war-epic which depicted the nobility of defending America. Now, after actually having seen it, I guess it’s safe to say that it is true that all great filmmakers are pot-smoking, America-hating Frenchmen. Actually—seriously—The Great Raid is a pretty good movie about the honor and bravery found in the service. I just had hoped it would’ve been a lot more creative than it is. From the hokey voice-overs to the irrelevant sub-plots to the bland acting, the movie could be called stale filmmaking at best. There are some riveting moments, to be sure—the scene involving the raid it is named after and the real footage director John Dahl uses from the era are particularly visually striking and often poignant—but, as a whole, The Great Raid doesn’t measure up to most other war films. I applaud its themes, but I can’t go so far as to deem it a first-rate motion picture.