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75The movie worked for me right up to the final scene, and then it caved in.
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75The plot is canny, but it would be little more than an ingenious springloaded device were it not for the performances by Howard and Iures.
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75Reminds us that the human dynamic can do a lot that explosions can't, even when the film flirts with formula.
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75Works uncommonly well because of the effective manner in which it blends together its various elements: the WW2 prison camp setting, the courtroom aspects, and the issues of honor, racism, and redemption.
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75The lack of attacks lets us concentrate on emotions rather than explosions.
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75A solid piece of storytelling that doesn't pander, skips the usual POW stereotypes and allows the film to work reasonably well as an epic of war, a survival story, a prison thriller, a murder mystery and a courtroom drama.
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70Gets too earnest for its own good. But Billy Ray and Terry George’s screenplay, taken from a John Katzenbach novel, is expertly plotted.
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67It may seem harmless, to some, that our movies have never entirely abandoned the land of Poitier-ville, but as Hart's War demonstrates, it's an insult that they haven't.
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63Just because a movie was inspired by real life and has good intentions doesn't mean it can't wind up as phony as a three-dollar bill.
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63Quickly morphs into a messy double message movie with motifs and clichés lifted from military courtroom films like "A Soldier's Story" and "A Few Good Men."
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63Could have been a contender, but it lacks the courage of its own ambivalence.
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60A decent thriller trying to overcome a rather preposterous premise.
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60In its amalgam of classic Hollywood war movies and courtroom dramas, Hart's War takes the audience to a place that never existed in order to teach it a lesson it already knows.
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60Absorbing in a low-key way but more dramatic where its secondary characters are concerned than its leads, and capped by climactic incidents that are less than entirely convincing.
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60A mildly psychological suspense thriller with military trappings.
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50The movie's exploration of prejudice within the military is certainly on target, but it's presented with all the finesse of a classroom civics lesson.
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50Hart's War has its priorities clear, but delivers them with insulting simplicity.
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Takes some admirable risks.
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50Having seen the TV series "Hogan's Heroes," we already know that a German prisoner of war camp can be cartooned; Hart's War goes further as a cartoon that takes itself seriously.
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50Despite its admirable sobriety for most of its running time, the film's climax is a parade of ludicrous clichés.
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50Confused and dramatically overwrought.
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50It more or less self-destructs in a ridiculous last few minutes when it becomes a noble sacrifice-o-rama.
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50Follows all these rules, which is why you'll get the enjoyable basic minimum. But not a whit more.
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50Ultimately, Hart's War can't decide what it is: treatise on racism, escape (and escapist) thriller or murder mystery. So it sits there -- and we sit there with it, waiting and waiting. And waiting.
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40Inoffensive and sporadically engrossing.
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40A movie like Hart's War, for all its realistic trappings, is essentially escapism. And yet it inadvertently pushes the 9/11 button. The real world is going to intrude a lot this year at the movies. Better get used to it.
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40Director Gregory Hoblit ("Primal Fear") is merely arranging cliches in new patterns until the surprise ending blows enough pro-military fervor up the audience's ass to make Colin Powell call a halt.
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Seriously off balance.
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40Less fascinating and finally unsatisfying is the awfully familiar racism angle, a subplot that, though unusual in a POW movie, turns regrettably earnest and preachy almost immediately.
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30Put Bruce Willis and this bewildering World War II movie in front of the firing line.
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30Wants to be everything and adds up to nothing. "War" is a film that tries to excel on several levels and falls flat on all of them.
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30If glum were good and bleak were best, Hart's War would be a standout.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 8
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Mixed: 2 out of 8
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Negative: 0 out of 8
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SylvieT.5
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FrankO.5
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TonyB.8What a shame that this fine film was not recognized by the critics or promoted effectively by MGM.