Starring: Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Rated: MA15+
I HAVE to confess that Hogan’s Heroes undermined POW stories for me.
I don’t for a moment underestimate the suffering that the soldiers endured there, but on screen I am always expecting Sergeant Schultz or Colonel Klink to appear.
They don’t get a run in Hart’s War but that doesn’t stop this film borrowing a few other ideas from the long-running TV series.
In the closing months of World War II, Lieutenant Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell), son of a US senator, is captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in Stalag VI where he comes up against Colonel William McNamara (Bruce Willis).
The colonel is convinced that, during his interrogation with the Gestapo, Hart betrayed secrets to the Germans. McNamara freezes Hart out. When African American pilot, Lieutenant Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard) is accused of the murder of a fellow prisoner, the publicly racist Staff Sergeant Bedford (Cole Hauser), McNamara and commandant Colonel Visser (Marcel Lures) decide to stage a court martial.
McNamara appoints Hart, who was in second year at Yale Law School before the war, to defend Scott.
Hart’s War crosses over three film genres – war-time adventure, POW escape thriller and courtroom drama.
Shot on location in the Czech Republic where director Gregory Hoblit was able to construct a replica of a POW Stalag, this film has a set and huge cast which add to the strong impression it makes. There is plenty of dramatic tension in this story.
Be warned that the early scenes in this film are much briefer but as gruesome as the opening of Saving Private Ryan.
And given what the producers are paying Bruce Willis to appear, we know that Colonel McNamara will have to win out in the end, which makes the final pay-off look like a much tougher version of Hogan’s Heroes.
