Hart's War*** out of **** February 21, 2002 BY ADAM KEMPENAAR It's tempting to write off Hart's War as a slick amalgam of other Hollywood movies - A Few Good Men meets The Great Escape meets Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. What saves this World War II courtroom drama from such a judgment is the complexity of its main characters. Caught by the Nazis and interrogated for three brutal days, Lt. Thomas Hart (Colin Farrell) is sent to a POW camp run by SS Maj. Wilhelm Visser (Marcel Iures). When a black pilot named Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard) is charged with murdering a racist white prisoner, Hart, a Yale law student before the war, is assigned to defend him. The court martial is led by the camp's highest ranking American officer, Col. William McNamara (Bruce Willis), a fourth-generation soldier who can't stand being cooped up while the war wages on without him. Unfortunately for Scott and his idealistic young lawyer, McNamara isn't really interested in justice. He's just looking for a distraction, something to keep his captors occupied. The conflict that erupts between Hart and McNamara is compelling not only because both characters believe they are doing what is right, but also because it's never spelled out for us who we should side with. In fact, I can't recall a recent Hollywood film that centered around two such flawed heroes. Hart earns our respect because of his diligence in pursuing justice, and yet, he's also a spoiled rich kid who buckles when interrogated by the Nazis at the beginning of the film, then lies to McNamara later about how much information he revealed. Similarly, as much as we want to admire McNamara for his skills as a soldier, and the loyalty he commands from his men, his ends-justifies-the-means attitude is difficult to swallow when it involves an innocent man facing a death sentence. Even Kommandant Visser is a far more intriguing character than one might expect. Rather than reduce him to the stereotypical ruthless Nazi, screenwriters Terry George and Billy Ray have the audacity to draw out the connections between he and his American counterparts. He, too, studied at Yale, and alone in his office at night he listens to "Negro jazz," even though it is forbidden. Strip away the uniform and the ideology and he is just a soldier, who, like McNamara, wishes he wasn't wasting his time in a POW camp. Hart's War also features strong acting from its ensemble cast, especially Farrell as the conflicted title character and Howard (The Best Man) as the beleaguered black soldier whose fellow (white) soldiers treat him with more contempt than they do the Nazis. The only weak link in the movie's chain of command is its biggest star. Willis tries to show how dignified and imperial Col. McNamara is by constantly making his 'serious face.' This typically means squinting his eyes really tightly and generally looking constipated. Slightly more annoying than Willis' performance is the film's gushy finale. Director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) overplays his uplifting message of racial harmony, and the 'all for one, one for all' result feels forced. In addition, he ends the movie with a tacky bit of voice-over narration from Hart that tells us what we already know - that this is a story about honor, and the redemption of two flawed heroes. Ultimately, it's these same flawed heroes who redeem Hart's War. Agree? Disagree? E-mail CinemaScoped at: cinemascoped@sbcglobal.net |
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