Simply Perfect

Sadly Over-hyped

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

As a Disabled Combat War Veteran of The Iraq War it seems fitting that this is my first review. Esp as i am watching the movie as I type this. I won't waste any time or space on explaining the plot as that is easily found elsewhere. I will say that i think this movie is an incredible depiction of an... Amazing story. A story about war, racism, education, hope, and I BELIEVE, most of all, a movie about the ideas & ideals of A United States Soldier. (Please keep this mind).I am completely blown away by all of these reviews by people that think the story is so stupid because it would quote... Never happen! Unquote. I am also very disappointed in all of the subsequent reviews stating that the movie is stupid and boring on the premise of its plot alone.If you want to watch a war movie full of guns and battle scenes then watch a different movie. This is a movie about a prisoner of war camp... There were a lot of gun fights. This is after the battles... In between the waring and the fighting. And most of all I just want to point out that every review then even once includes the word concentration camp is a complete waste of time. This is not a concentration camp this is a P.O.W. camp. And furthermore it is a German P.O.W. camp not a Japanese. P.O.W. camp. There is a big difference.So many reviews that implausibility of the movie because the Germans were so nice to them and they would never let this happen... first off, the second apex and inciting incident in the movie is the execution of an American prisoner without cause or conversation.Also, One of the most poignant facts about this movie is that the German soldier in charge is a Yale educated German. Meaning he spent time in America & understood American ways. Some German officers even did follow the Geneva Convention. & some POWW camps were not strictly execution camps (as were so many P.O.W. camps in the pacific... Now while I have absolutely no citing that this actually ever occurred (the trial w/in the movie) the reason that this makes perfect sense is that this German DID allow it to happen... As so many other German soldiers allowed other random things to happen in other pow movies. Whether it is because he is amused by the entire situation or he is simply trying to pacify the masses and keep the Americans busy... It's simply happensI think one of the best comparisons to accurately portray this movie would be to the Great escape. As were that movie actually was about the prisoners and their escape plan & what followed. This movie is more about the prisoners...&... Their actual human emotions DURING the plot to escape. Racism during World War Two was real & very serious. Gentrification and separatism were very much alive... Even in... & especially sometimes soldiers minds.I was especially surprised by some of the professional reviews and how disappointed they were in the finale of the movie. HUGE SPOILER ALERT!!! The movie is not ruined, the plot or any of its points are not discredited, by the idea of, or the subsequent execution of Bruce Willis's character. As I stated in the beginning, this movie is about the ideas and ideals of a soldier. Or perhaps even more so, the ideas and ideals of what the United States Army considers a perfect soldier. The rules in a p.o.w camp were simple... If you try to escape you would be executed.In the Great Escape almost all of the near dozens of men who participated in the plotting & action of, escaping were rounded up & executed. Which is exactly what is about to happen at the end of this movie. Until Bruce Willis stops it by offering up his life, the life of an officer, for the lives of his men. He is, by the Army's actual manual, every aspect of a hero. Of a true hero. Yes he's racist, No he wasn't exactly open to the idea of lesser educated officers... but not only do both of those thoughts change slightly by the end of the movie... But by sacrificing himself for his men he is, in that single action, showing you, the contrast of Colin Farrell's character & his actions in the opening of the movie. When Colin Farrell is captured & interrogated, he is only released into the p.o.w camp after he gives up the location of other men other units & equipment locations. One of Bruce Willis's character's biggest problems with Colin Farrell's character throughout the entire movie is that he knows that. He knows Colin Farrell gave up other soldiers, possibly even their lives, for his life to be spared. Now, as immediately as Bruce Willis hates Colin Farrell's character for that, he grows to understand that not all men are the perfect soldier, & that some quote lesser perfect soldiers unquote can sometimes be better men.This is, VERY SIMPLY Hart's war. Who is worth it? How many men, how many lives, can equal to just one life?When is sacrificing yourself, or perhaps in metaphor... Sacrificing your very ideas and ideals, your belief system, and therefore your life as it was... Worth it?Bruce Willis is not just letting a German soldier of shoot him in the head so that he won't execute 50 other men instead. Bruce Willis Is allowing Colin Farrell and all of the men watching, the opportunity to realize that all men can change. And that that change is worth it... If its for the greater good.

Lt. Thomas Hart (Colin Farrell) is captured during the Battle of the Bulge. He's interrogated for only 3 days by a notorious German. In the POW camp, the CO Col. William McNamara (Bruce Willis) doesn't trust Hart. He's put in with the enlisted men. When 2 black flyboys are put into his barrack, tension runs high with bigoted Staff Sgt. Vic Bedford (Cole Hauser). Later, Lt. Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard) is accused of killing the racist Bedford and is put on trial.The twist is obvious. I think it would be better if we think that McNamara is a racist who wanted Scott killed. Instead, there really isn't much of a mystery. In fact when the twist is revealed, it's odd to me why Hart didn't realize it sooner. The story just isn't set up properly. Bruce Willis is his upstanding self throughout and couldn't set up his character properly to throw us off. He needed to be bad before we could be surprised by his turn.

To me the movie was average, probably because I don't find it so mind shattering that it pictures racism in the US military during WW2. It was there, that is an accepted historic fact so I do not think the film should win too much praise for "boldly going where no one has gone before". The plot was OK in the beginning but after the first 30 minutes it started to become less and less believable. The life in the camp is unreal, the Germans, the German colonel, etc.The culmination comes (and there I agree with the critic) at the end when all of a sudden almost everybody is competing in order to be the first to be executed, to die as a hero. Then Bruce Willis suddenly returns in a sudden change of mind, just in time to save everybody by getting executed himself... Nonsense, this just doesn't happen.

This is one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen, the reason I say this is because it started out really awesome and then slowly turned into a terrible movie that is totally forgettable. I would say that the movie is actually really good up to the point when the African-American prisoners are brought into the prisoner of war camp and then what started out as a really interesting movie about the conditions of POW's in WWII turns into some kind of misguided statement about racism. In the end, I couldn't really understand what kind of statement or message this movie was trying to make. On the one hand it seemed to be about the inequality of US soldiers during WWII but on the other hand that whole thing was just a cover-up for some clandestine sabotage operation. The ending was completely unbelievable but by that point I didn't care because I wanted to watch a "War" movie not a courtroom drama about racism that was just a sideshow to hide an operation that no one, watching the movie, knows about until the very end(and it wasn't one of those "wow, what a cool endings" either, it was just a "WTF just happened?" ending that was stupid. I seriously doubt that this movie was an accurate portrayal of how POW's, even of different races, would treat one another.Conclusion, to make a long post even longer ;), This movie starts out really good and you think you are about to see a really awesome WWII movie but instead you have been tricked and what you end up with is a boring courtroom drama that in then in is completely meaningless because it was just a cover-up for some larger goal, and top off the stupidity the unarmed Bruce Willis character walks unopposed back into the prison camp, through the front gate...seriously, and basically let's himself get killed. This movie makes me mad because from the beginning you can tell this thing had potential and then someone, I guess the writers and director just quit caring about making sense and just told a complete fiction and nothing even remotely close to a good fictional WWII movie like "Inglorious Basterds".