HART'S WAR (2002)
Plot:
Director Gregory Hoblit’s debut feature was the tricky courtroom drama PRIMAL FEAR. With his fourth feature, HART’S WAR, Hoblit is back with another. This time the court is inside a WWII prisoner-of-war camp. The defendant is Lieutenant Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard), a black officer accused of killing a racist sergeant (Cole Hauser). Scott lawyer is Lieutenant Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell), a second-year law student at Yale. A U.S. senator’s son, Hart was having a relatively easy war until he was captured, interrogated, and sent to Stalag VI. The camp commandant is the urbane, charming, and ruthless SS Major Visser (compellingly played by Rumanian actor Marcel Iures). The ranking American officer at the camp is Colonel William McNamara (Bruce Willis), and Hart is soon in conflict with him. When Scott is accused of murder, McNamara insists that the prisoners should hold a court martial, and he appoints Hart counsel for the defense. At the court martial, Hart finds his client is being railroaded, although he gets help from unexpected quarters. Intricately plotted by scriptwriters Billy Ray and Terry George, and filmed by Hoblit with his accustomed attention to detail, HART’S WAR is a devious and absorbing courtroom/POW drama.
Cast/Crew:
Written by: John Katzenbach (novel) Billy Ray (screenplay) and Terry George (screenplay)
Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Starring:
Bruce Willis .... Col. William A. McNamara
Colin Farrell .... Lt. Thomas W. Hart
Terrence Dashon Howard .... Lt. Lincoln A. Scott
Cole Hauser .... Staff Sgt. Vic W. Bedford
Marcel Iures .... Col. Werner Visser
Linus Roache .... Capt. Peter A. Ross
Vicellous Reon Shannon .... Lt. Lamar T. Archer
Notes:
'Norton, Edward' and Tobey Maguire were both in talks for the lead role, but both eventually dropped out.
The whole Super 35 film was scanned by a Spirit Datacine at "2k" resolution (1920*1459 actual pixels, over sampled by 1/15 to true 2k) and digitally color-graded at Cinesite LA. The film was then digitally squeezed and output by Cineon Lightning laser recorders to anamorphic inter-negatives for release printing.
Reviews:
Earnest 'Hart's War' is a relic from another era
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
Hart's War
Late in World War II and with the German machine crumbling, an American colonel and stalag prisoner (Bruce Willis) pulls off a surprising feat: He persuades his German counterpart and prison-camp commander (Marcel Iures) to push aside wartime chaos and take part in a murder trial. Based partly on true-life events, Hart's War is being marketed as an action melodrama. It's not. A lot of what transpires — especially some high-octane speechifying — comes off as contrived. The result is an earnest racial-issues picture that might have gotten respectful critical praise in a different era — say, the '60s.
Willis' star power may sell the picture, but he doesn't even play Hart. Tigerland 's Colin Farrell does, and he's cast as a guy a POW camp can't do without: a former Yale law school student. This comes in handy when two downed black Tuskegee Airmen end up in the camp, only to be reminded — not that they aren't every day — that the Army is segregated. A racist white sergeant makes a ruckus over the impromptu camp integration, which leads to one of the fliers' deaths and the sergeant's almost immediate murder.
The surviving flier (Terrence Howard) is naturally the person accused, and soon a full-fledged trial is taking place as the German commandant looks on with wry moral superiority.
War is directed by Gregory Hoblit, who after a stylish feature debut with the luridly compelling Primal Fear, fumbled a pair of supernatural duds ( Fallen and Frequency ). Of the four, this comes the closest to being an old-school movie for grown-ups: well-intentioned, neither coarse nor stupid, and capably crafted, though the washed-out and intentionally unprettifying color wears on the eyes over a 125-minute haul. At a different time (1960s again), Hoblit would have been allowed to shoot in a more visually dynamic black-and-white — and a long prison-camp movie without much action or humor needs all the dynamism it can get.
As the defense lawyer, Farrell gets to wax indignant about racism; as the defendant, Howard gets to display his escalating range. (A recent fixture of romantic comedies, he also played civil rights figure Ralph Abernathy in HBO's Boycott. ) Top-billed or not, Willis is a supporting player, though his character has an ace up his sleeve. This leads to a late plot twist, which (for some) might carry War through a single viewing, but it's tough to see what it could ever offer anyone on a second.
Despite its title and a few misleading explosions in the trailer, this is stolid Bruce, not funky Bruce. And stolid Bruce may have peaked with The Sixth Sense. As a general rule, any movie that credits Willis' hairstylist is likely to be an uphill battle, especially when you keep asking the person you're with, "What's that on his head?"
Trailers:
- Windows Media Player [HIGH]
- Windows Media player [LOW]
DVD info:
-
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. This DVD will probably NOT be viewable in other countries. Read more about DVD formats.)
-
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
-
Rated: [R] Not for sale to persons under age 18.
-
Studio: MGM/UA Video
-
DVD Release Date: April 22, 2003
-
DVD Features:
-
Audio Commentary with Bruce Willis the director and writer.
-
Audio commentary with the producer.
-
Deleted scenes with the director's commentary.
-
Photo Gallery.
-
Theatrical Trailer.
-
- Details from Amazon.com