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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Hart's War
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
2½ stars out of 4
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Movies often act as a window on the past, and this wartime drama
combines the POW setting of "Stalag 17" with the courtroom drama of "A Few Good
Men." Set in 1944 in Augsberg, Germany, "Hart's War" takes its name from a young
staff officer, Lt. Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell), a senator's son, who finds
himself embroiled in blatant racial bigotry when he's captured by Nazis,
brutally interrogated and imprisoned in Stalag VI. Col. William McNamara (Bruce
Willis), the highest-ranking U.S. officer in the camp, assigns Hart to keep an
eye on two black Tuskegee-trained Airmen, one of whom is set up for execution by
a bigoted staff sergeant (Cole Hauser). Then the staff sergeant is killed with
the remaining pilot (Terrence Howard) standing over his body. Rather than
allowing the suspected culprit to be shot, the shrewd, seemingly opportunistic
McNamara persuades the austere yet courtly German Commandant (Marcel Iures) -
who loathes Russian prisoners but is more tolerant of Americans - to stage a
formal court-martial to determine the pilot's guilt. The only lawyer in camp is
designated prosecutor so, since in civilian life Hart was a second-year Yale law
student, he's assigned to the defense - and the crafty Commandant, a Yale alum,
supplies Hart with a military law manual. But that precedes an unexpected
third-act plot turn that truly twists the barbed wire fence. While much of the
script by Billy Ray and Terry George, based on John Katzenbach's novel, is
overtly cliché'd, even jingoistic, Gregory Hoblit's direction is solid. Rachel
Portman's score is quite evocative, as is Alar Kivilo's stark cinematography,
filmed in the Czech town of Milovice, near Prague. On the Granger Movie Gauge of
1 to 10, "Hart's War" is a preachy, unrealistic 6, blatantly battling for social
justice.
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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