Saturday, August 27, 2005

Tagline: The Most Daring Rescue Mission Of Our Time Is A Story That Has Never Been Told.

Set in the Philippines in 1945, The Great Raid tells the true story of the 6th Ranger Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) who undertake a daring rescue mission against all odds. Traveling thirty miles behind enemy lines, the 6th Ranger Battalion aims to liberate over 500 American prisoners-of-war from the notorious Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp in the most audacious rescue ever.

Great movie - well directed, well told story, well acted.

If you want to know more about what really happened, check the Wikipedia entry.

The coolest thing about the movie is the opening and closing credits - stock footage on both ends of the movie gave the sense of the real men, the real horrors, the reminder that this really happened. No one moved at all during those closing credits.

And it confirmed for me that President Truman was right when he made the difficult decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the Japanese were not going to surrender peaceably unless they were forced to. I believe that they would have ignored anything other than the nuclear bombs and would have continued to fight and fight and fight.

It has some harsh scenes of brutality and some minor profanity. I highly recommend this movie with 4 out of 4 stars.