| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

The Great Raid. Dir. by John Dahl. Prod. by Marty Katz and Lawrence Bender. Miramax Films, 2005. 132 mins.
A cinematic rendering of the U.S. Army's rescue of some five hundred prisoners of war (POWs) from a camp near Cabanatuan, Luzon, the Philippines, in January 1945, The Great Raid once again challenges the professional historian to find the line of departure where historical truth fades into fanciful entertainment, camouflaged as "a real story." Film critics even as erudite as Roger Ebert or Peter Travers are no help since their criteria have nothing to do with historical accuracy.	1
At the operational level, The Great Raid is a success, a straightforward account of a well-planned, daringly executed raid by the Sixth Ranger Battalion, U.S. Sixth Army, and two battalions of Filipino guerrillas. Inflicting casualties upon the Japanese at a rate of four or five to one, the raiders released the POWs and whisked them off to the Sixth Army lines, a trek of some thirty miles through unfriendly territory. The strongest part of this account is the place of honor given the Filipino guerrillas, whose gallant stands against larger, betterarmed Japanese forces sealed off the Cabanatuan objective area and held the escape route open.	2
At this level—despite some obvious compromises in small matters such as aircraft types—The Great Raid is a success as antiquarian truth. The weapons and uniforms are correct, even though the mortars and 2.36-inch rockets explode like mini–nuclear weapons. The Sixth Rangers are engaging G.I.'s, most of them fresh faces from daytime TV and crime dramas. Lt. Col. Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) is a bit of a martinet, but a schooled (United States Military Academy, class of 1936) overachiever whose volatile temper and theatrical command style did not really compromise his balanced assessment of tactical risks and his concern for his troops. Mucci was an "outfront" leader whose personal qualities and opportunities did not equal those of his more famous academy classmates: William C. Westmoreland, Creighton Abrams Jr., Bruce Palmer Jr., and John H. Michaelis. There is an engaging "band of brothers" relationship between Mucci and the commander of his strike force—Company C (Reinforced)—Capt. Robert Prince, a spare, introspective citizen-soldier with a Stanford University degree and a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) commission (1941). Prince (James Franco) is a cerebral soldier who hides his rotting feet and inner doubts from his "can do" commanding officer, aided by a medical officer, Capt. James Fisher (Robert Mammone), the son of the novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher and a Harvard Medical School graduate. Ironically, Fisher was one of the two Rangers killed in action at Cabanatuan.	. . .

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