"1944 December, I was miles from the front."
It is Belgium December 16, 1944 where our story begins. Lieutenant Tommy Hart is driving a commanding officer to his headquarters.
Hart, played by Colin Farrell, is a second year law student at Yale who is enlisted as an officer's aide due to his father's political
pull. Hart has never seen frontline combat unfortunately for him the frontline comes to him. He and the officer are stopped by German
soldiers impersonating American MP's. A bullet to the head is the officer's quick execution which puts Hart into a panic mode. He
manages to get away in the jeep but after a fast paced chase he crashes while escaping into the woods. When his head clears he finds
himself in a long ditch filled with a squadron of dead frozen soldiers.
"The allies have landed nearly 2 million men."
Hart wakes up a captive in an interrogation prison where we witness his brutal handling. Giving only his name and rank to questions
only results in his being left shoeless and sockless in the cold until they eventually leave him stripped naked in the ice cold cell. They
want him to to point out allied fuel dumps in the area. After three days they are finished with him and they ship him off with other soldiers
to a P.O.W. camp.
"For you the war is over."
He is herded into a cattle train barefooted with hundreds of over prisoners. They all suffer in the cold train cars. Director Gregory
Hoblit has Cinematographer Alar Kivilo photograph the entire film in drap and bleak shades of blues. The bleakness and desolation
of the scenery in the Czech Republic that Kivilo photographs forshadows the fact that nothing glamourous or glorious is going to happen
in this film. He has photograped this so well that you can feel the cold they feel and the despair that they are experiencing. After three days
on the train, Hoblit makes it even worse by giving us a scene of pandemonium at the train station where Allied fighter pilots attack the
prison train since they can not see the big POW markings on the train roofs. The prisoners are victims of the strafing as well as the
German soldiers. Talk about adding insult to injury. The quick thinking and co-ordination of the prisoners have them forming a living
POW sign that causes the pilots to stop their attack. Does the director end it there. No, he has the soldiers marched for miles in shabby
clothes ill suited to the harsh snow storm conditions, for another five days. He is set on showing us the terrible bleakness of these
soldiers lives.
"Once again I'm forced to remind you, escape is not a sport."
STALAG 6 A, Ausberg, Germany. The drab snow covered prisoner of war camp is run by Luftwaffe Oberst Edward Von Reiter, the
Commandant and the American officer in charge is Colonel William McNamara (Bruce Willis) a hardnosed West Point man.
This is no Hogan's Heroes camp. To show the audience and the new prisoner's, that attempting escape is not an option he
hangs two Russian prisoners to make his point clear. The German's treat the Russians as an inferior species that is to be disdained.
McNamara questions Lieutenant Hart and after coming to the conclusion that the young officer broke under interrogation, he bunks
him in with the enlisted men barracks as he doesn't trust him. There is a reason but you will have to find out yourself, won't you.
"So tell me Lieutenant, how come you're not dead?"
Hart is in charge of this barrack but he is tolerated by the enlisted men and is taken under wing by Staff Sargeant Vic Bedford who is the
camp scrounger and trader. Everything is bearable until two black air force pilots prisoners are brought to the camp. Lieutenant Lincoln
Scott and Lamar Archer played by Terrance Dashon Howard and Vicellous Reon Shannon are bunked in Hart's
barracks by McNamara. We are suddenly hit with something that really wasn't expected and that is the total racism of the the men. The
derogatory remarks come hard and heavy. Let's keep in mind here that even though there has been a lot of revisionist history lately in
movies, blacks in the wartime America were still targets of bigotry and hatred and in the army they were usually cooks, laterine cleaners
and gravediggers. A few did manage to work hard and become pilots even though officers always tried to deter them. An excellent
example of this, is a film called MEN OF HONOUR starring Robert DeNiro and Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carl Brashear. Cuba plays
a black enlisted man who becomes the Navy's first African-American diver.
"Them bars don't make you good enough to share the same roof with us white boys."
It won't take you long to realize that this situation is going to be used to show us just how the Americans and Germans were alike when it
came their treatment of the blacks and the Russians. What seemed sad to watch is how the American did not see just how similar they
were to the Germans. The Nazis believed that Americans and other races were inferior and here we get to see the American prisoners
just as rascist as the Nazis were. Ah, hindsight is so easy isn't it. Vic Bedford is the most vocal rascist and makes it apoint to express his
hatred. This leads to the main point of the film.
"Is this going to buy me a little civility, Sargeant?"
"Tons."
Someone is murdered and you bet Lieutenant Lincoln Scott is accused by the Germans. They are going to execute him when McNamara
intercedes demanding a trial by his people. He assigns Hart to be the defense lawyer. That's as far as I go because now the story has
become a murder mystery and you will just have to go out and see what is really happening.
"Is he a dog...lesser race?"
The plot to this film seemed pretty tight to me. Everything falls into place nicely with lots of twists and turns and betrayals. Ultimately the
film gets down to sacrifices that one must make for the greater good. The acting is excellent with Terrance Dashon Howard's character of
the black pilot Scott as the most outstanding. His acting is good throughout but when he is on the stand during the trial he has
a speech that is very rousing and revealing of the feeling of blacks during the Second World War. His moving speech was probably the
best sequence of the film.
"Yale is not in the habit of accepting half wits, at least not when I studied there."
I enjoyed this as I do most films with Bruce Wiliis and I can recommend it to you wholeheartedly. One piece of advice, if you see the trailer
do not let it fool you HART'S WAR is not a movie with all action guns and explosions. Yes it does have enough action but it also
has a good story; one that you will enjoy. It is a story of racism, bigotry, murder, betrayl, honour and ultimate sacrifice. Hart's war ends
but you can always read the novel of the same name that this movie was based on by John Katzenbach.
Here are some quotes to tease you with...
"You mean that's the first time you seen a man lie through his teeth while holding the bible?"
"Lieutenant, enjoy the manual."
"You think the war will wait for you, colonel. It will not."
"We served our country sir, Archer and I and what you allowed to happen to him was appalling."
"The army has it's share of cowards and Vic Bedford was one."
"So your men are saboteurs as well."
"No they are just soldiers following my orders"
"You wish to trade your life for theirs? Very Well."
"We buried the colonel behind the barracks and three months later the Germans surrendered."
"What do you know about duty, Hart?."
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