Hey folks, Harry here... Due to the extreme advance nature of this review, HART'S WAR isn't scheduled for release till April 21st, 2002, I must warn you that this review is of an extremely rough print, perhaps even the 'first assembly' which has nearly no timing of scenes in place, sound is nowhere near mixed, color timing ain't there, FX don't really exist, the score is temped and it probably runs about 20 minutes longer than the actual film.... However, even though this was that rough, The Mattman seems to really love the flick and Bruce Willis, calling his performance his best ever. So has Gregory Hoblit (director of PRIMAL FEAR, FALLEN and FREQUENCY) knocked one out of the park for next year's Spring? We'll see...
Hart’s War (Advance Screening) Review
Howdy Harry! I had the good fortune to attend the first advance screening of the new Bruce Willis WW2 film, “Hart’s War,” which debuts April, 2002. The film was a bit rough around the edges and quite long. The opening 40 minutes was bogged down by a sense of “where’s all this headed?”. Up until this point I really hadn’t invested myself in the characters or story. And then all of the sudden the movie really kicked in, packing a powerful and emotional punch.
Colin Farrell stars as Lieutenant Tommy Hart. The film opens with Hart being captured by Nazis, interrogated, and finally placed in a prison camp. Here he meets William McNamara (Willis), a hard-edged colonel who has assumed command his fellow prisoners of war. McNamara immediately asks Hart who his interrogator was and whether or not he gave in to him. Hart lies and says that he gave no information. But McNamara’s deceptive line of questioning reveals the lie. This will, of course, come back to haunt Hart by the end of the movie.
The true plot finally emerges when two black Tuskegee airmen are shot down and brought to the prison camp. McNamara places them under Hart’s wing because he believes Hart won’t be able to protect them. He’s right. Trouble arrives in the form of a POW named Bedford (Pitch Black’s Cole Hauser), who plants a knife in one of the airmen’s’ beds and gets the unfortunate man executed by the Nazis for possession of a lethal weapon. Not long after, Bedford is murdered under mysterious circumstances, and the remaining airman, Lincoln Scott (Terrence Dashon Howard), is blamed under motive of vengeance. McNamara insists on a trial and appoints an ill-equipped Hart as Scott’s lawyer. A shocking array of twists and turns follow, carefully unraveling everyone’s true motives and spiraling toward an unpredictable and poignant climax.
This is Willis’s finest performance yet. With “Hart’s War” he has proven that he is a first rate actor. Anyone disappointed by his small role in The Siege will be quite pleased with his character in this film. Not only well acted, but also well written, I was unable to put a finger on who McNamara was until the very end of the film. Farrell is also good as Hart, but he is more of a straight man than anything else, thrown into a mess that he may not be able to sort out. Terrence Dashon Howard gives the film’s strongest performance, which is no more apparent than in his stirring speech during his trial. Most movie speeches come off as corny and unrealistic, but Howard delivers his with such subtle finesse that it is effectively genuine.
What delighted me about these characters was the amount of depth and the refusal to label any of them as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Even the Nazi Major Visser (Marcel Iures), who any lesser director would have made the villain, comes across as a nice guy forced to do a dreadful job. “I’ve always enjoyed a good courtroom drama,” he says of America’s movies, likening them to the events taking place in his camp. Visser proves to be one of Hart’s greatest allies, providing the aspiring lawyer with knowledge that could help him save his client. Visser even listens to Jazz and has a small black panther sculpture in his quarters, suggesting his appreciation for the culture.
On the scorecard I advised that the film be trimmed a bit, notably the opening. I’m no filmmaker, but some swift editing might help the pacing. Some of the effects were not completed, but this didn’t really harm the experience as this is not a heavy effects film. I liked that most of the dogfights were viewed from a grounded perspective, and I hope the studio doesn’t force the director (Gregory Hoblit) to make these scenes more ‘theatrical’. “Hart’s War” also has yet to be scored. This version was glazed over with a few themes from The Thin Red Line and Braveheart (I think). The right music will be the icing on the cake, given how powerful the film was even though it was mostly absent of it.
All in all, I highly recommend this film. While I hope its pace is improved, I wouldn’t have a single bit of dialogue and/or plot removed. The story was original and didn’t follow the cliché paths most courtroom dramas fall prey to. On April 21st, 2002, go see this film!
Call me Mattman.
