..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Rescue Mission
The Great Raid
A solidly entertaining World War II adventure free of movie star distractions, The Great Raid, is available as a two-platter Collector's Series title from Miramax Home Entertainment (UPC#786936692181, $30). Directed by John Dahl, the film, released to theaters in 2005, depicts an attempt to retrieve POWs from a Japanese camp in the Philippines ahead of the Allied advancement. Benjamin Bratt and Joseph Fiennes are the most recognizable names in the cast, but the movie's appeal rests primarily on its step-by-step depiction of the planning and execution of the mission, intercut with scenes from the lives of the POWs at the camp and a valid subplot about a woman with an Eastern European passport who works in a Manila hospital and helps to smuggle medicine to the POWs. Running 131 minutes, the film does not look away when depicting the atrocities committed by the Japanese, and other horrors of war, so it didn't exactly have big boxoffice potential, but the validity of its drama and the astuteness of its design-when the action finally starts, every moment is riveting-will enable it to endure as a great war picture for years to come.
The image is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.4:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The film's colors are deliberately drained, particularly in the camp sequences, but the transfer is accurate and unblemished. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is nicely mixed without calling attention to itself, and is worth amplifying. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles, 23 minutes of superfluous but occasionally interesting deleted scenes, and a 20-minute promotional featurette that provides some basic background information.
A commentary track features mostly a group talk with Dahl (Dahl also supplies an alternate commentary on the deleted scenes, explaining why they were dropped), producer Marty Katz, editor Scott Chestnut and military film advisor Dale Dye, with a few inserted comments from author Hampton Sides. The presentation of the film is identified as the 'Director's Cut,' but Dahl only mentions a couple of sequences that he rearranged slightly. Generally, it is a good talk, going over the history of the actual event, the military dynamics of the raid, and how the film itself was staged. Some of the extras, who were required to appear emaciated, were terminally ill, and felt they were contributing what they could to the world by participating in the film. "We also put our extras on a restricted diet, and we had a nutritionist in the beginning. Particularly our actors, some of them who had been cast at the last moment. They all had to go into this regime of restricted food, but under doctor supervision and nutrition supervision. Eventually, they got smart. They realized if it was their birthday, they'd be able to get, like, a cookie, and so all of a sudden, I hear from the nutritionist, 'Isn't it odd, there's so many people who have birthdays just one after another.' We finally realized these guys had decided to [take turns having birthdays]. We finally caught on to that and ended that, but for a while, they had a free ride. The [actors playing the rescuers], brutal killers that they were, immediately would fill their plates up with huge food, just everything that the [actors playing the prisoners] couldn't eat, and they'd go over and sit right in front of them at the table and just make them miserable. And so the poor guys came up with this birthday scheme."
They also talk extensively about the brutality of the Japanese forces-something that apparently came not so much from Japanese traditions of honor and that sort of thing, but from the Hitler-like attitudes of the Japanese leadership. The young Japanese actors did not believe at first that such incidents had occurred, because schools in Japan still gloss that over, and they had to be persuaded by the Japanese technical advisors who were on the set. Dye supplies a telling anecdote. "The common denominator that I've found, talking to a lot of former prisoners-of-war, is that it was absolute night and day between prisoners who had been held by the Germans and prisoners who had been held by the Japanese. The most significant thing is, here we are, 60-65 years after the end of WWII, and you find that the [military personnel] who were held by the Germans, will say, 'Well, you know, it was a bad experience, and I'm sorry it happened, but it was war, and I understand it and I survived it.' The people who were held by the Japanese, to this day, almost to a man, still harbor great anger, great resentment, great hate, in some cases, for the Japanese people as a whole. They simply see it as, 'my oppressors.'"
A second platter contains an excellent 56-minute documentary about the POW experience in the Philippines. There is no promotional material referencing Great Raid in the program, which features archival footage, a historical overview, and reminiscences by survivors. It covers what service in the Philippines was like before the war began, how and why the American forces surrendered, the atrocities the Japanese committed upon the soldiers and Philippine citizens (including babies), life in the camps as the war progressed, what the liberation was like, and even a discussion of the difficulties the survivors had coping with life when they came home. It is both comprehensive and succinct, and the wealth of reminiscences prevents it from the kind of distancing effect that insulates most documentaries on the subject.
Additionally, there is an 8-minute collection of reminiscences by those who were involved in the event depicted in the movie, a good 14-minute overview of the event's context by Sides, an enjoyable 12-minute look at the training Dye put the actors through, a good 13-minute segment on the film's sound mix, a 4-minute 'dedication' listing of the soldiers who were in the camp or participated in the raid, and a still-frame timeline.
October 25, 2006
DVD Roundup: This Week's DVD Releases
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