The Great Raid (Film Review)

2005 Miramax Films
Directed by: John Dahl; Written by: Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Connie Nielsen, Marton Csokas, and Joseph Fiennes
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 132 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 3/10

Near the end of WWII, the 6th Ranger Battalion is ordered to raid a POW camp in the Philippines. This camp houses thousands of American soldiers who were brutalized by the Japanese in the famous 1942 Bataan Death March. The battalion will have to head deep into enemy territory and take on a Japanese force of superior numbers in order to set their fellow soldiers free.
The above real life story sounds like the perfect setup for a thrilling, action-packed film. 2005's The Great Raid is not a thrilling, action-packed film. Director, John Dahl, in accordance with Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro's screenplay, just can't seem to focus on anything. The actual raid is filmed fairly well, though it is presented with little flair, a far cry from Steven Spielberg's "you are there" battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, released seven years before. The film spends perhaps the majority of its runtime following Connie Nielsen as real-life nurse, Margaret Utinsky, who worked to smuggle medication into the POW camp. The film is called The Great Raid, and indeed, I wondered, "What does this have to do with the raid?" throughout many of the film's 132 minutes her story occupies. Utinsky's (contested) story deserves its own film, but its shoehorning here distracts from the titular raid that the film is already struggling to properly focus upon, as it jumps from POV to POV.
The result of this lack of focus is a listless film that often bores, and rarely excites. It doesn't do justice to the brave men who fought to set their brothers free, and in the pantheon of U.S. war films, it hangs from a lowly branch.