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The Great Raid (Full Screen Edition)
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List Price: $19.99
Special Price: $17.99
Your Savings: $ 2.00 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Miramax Home Entertainment
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Robert Mammone, Max Martini, James Carpinello
Directed By: John Dahl
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0786936688337
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Miramax Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Miramax Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Miramax Home Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-12-20
Running Time: 133
Studio: Miramax Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 2005-08-12
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Editorial Reviews:
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Nearly three years after it was filmed, The Great Raid finally appeared as a welcome reminder that good old-fashioned World War II movies never go out of style. While lacking the scale, prestige, and pulse-pounding momentum of Saving Private Ryan, this fact-based war drama benefits from a back-to-basics approach to realism and a rousing rescue climax that more than compensates for the slower passages that precede it. Adapted from the books The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Ghost Soldiers, it chronicles the five-day mission (in late January 1945) to rescue 511 American prisoners of war held by the Japanese at Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. Under the direction of neo-noir specialist John Dahl (The Last Seduction), the film's three-part structure follows the raid mission led by Lt. Col. Mucci (Benjamin Bratt); the plight of the POWs at Cabanatuan, including malaria-stricken Maj. Gibson (Joseph Fiennes); and civilian resistance in Manila as carried out by real-life hero and Gibson's (fictional) would-be lover Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen), whose effort to aid the POWs is vigilantly monitored by the enemy Japanese. In keeping with war-movie traditions, Dahl handles character and action with no-nonsense intelligence, favoring a slow build over pumped-up adrenalin. By the time the miraculous rescue is executed with critical assistance by Filpino guerillas, The Great Raid has earned its stripes, honoring the brave men who carried out the most successful rescue mission in U.S. military history. --Jeff Shannon
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wow! What a wonderful and touching film
Comment: I rented this the first time from iTunes to watch on my Apple TV. I know it could have been done better by allowing the viewer to care more for certain characters, but still with that said, it was well done and moving to know so many were rescued. As Benjamin Bratt's character said, "Its not about doing this to feel like a hero, but that these men will take this with them throughout the rest of their lives, what they did here". My father who is 82 and a veteran was recently placed into a retirement home. He loves his HDTV and loves this movie. Take care of those who helped us in life!
Customer Rating:
Summary: good movie, bad widescreen conversion
Comment: the movie is good but the widescreen version is disappointing. they cropped the top and bottom of the frame to make it fit the widescreen aspect ratio. it does not even resemble what was shown on the movie theaters. just buy the fullscreen version.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and stays mostly true to the book
Comment: As American forces began to retake the Philippines during WWII, the Japanese began killing the POWs they had captured. Determined not to let this happen to the 511 soldiers held at Cabanatuan, Lt. Colonel Mucci and Capt. Prince devised a daring plan to sneak in ahead of the advancing troops and rescue the POWs. Based on the true story as detailed in the book "Ghost Soldiers," it's an exciting and heart-breaking tale. And while it's been a couple of years since I read the book, it seemed that the movie followed rather closely to the true story, although I don't remember the "love story" between POW Major Gibson and the civilian Margaret in Manila.
Overall, a good and inspiring movie, although the acting by Benjamin Bratt and James Franco comes across as suprisingly unemotional. The look of the movie is very effective as well, with much of it looking somewhat faded and washed-out, and the use of original black & white film clips was especially effective. And in spite of the over-the-top violence shown in some recent war movies, it is rather restrained here, although a few scenes of executions by the Japanese soldiers are shown in gut-wrenching detail. But this isn't the main agenda of the movie, as the Japanese atrocities (as detailed in the book) are limited in their portrayal here. Nevertheless, those scenes alone are the reason for the R rating. Good movie, but I recommend the book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Prisoners of Miramax
Comment: Some films just get made simply because so much time and money has been wasted developing them that it almost seems unthinkable not to make them even though everyone at the studio has long since lost interest. Case in point The Great Raid, one of Miramax's infamous shelf-hoggers. Initially intended as a Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise vehicle before they got a better offer from the Martians, it finally went before the cameras in Australia and China in 2002 with the less than A-list combo of director John Dahl and an underpowered cast headed by Benjamin Bratt, James Franco, Joseph Fiennes and Connie Nielson only for Harvey Scissorhands to spend three years tinkering with the cut (Disney later claimed that, like the 45 other films still on the shelf at the time they parted company, the Weinsteins shelved it so it wouldn't affect their performance-related bonus and severance pay), by which time it had cost some $70m or more. Junked in a few theatres to no discernible business in their let's-wreck-the-joint-for-the-new-management spree when they started their new company, it never made it across the Atlantic, quietly sneaking out onto DVD when no-one was looking.
While it's easy to see why Spielberg and Cruise bailed - not enough drama, no big star role - the end result certainly isn't anything to be ashamed of. Based on the most successful rescue mission in US military history, when a group of untested Rangers rescued 500 prisoners of war in Cabanatuan in the Philippines before their Japanese captors could kill them, it's the kind of film you're surprised wasn't made decades ago. Even the casting of Fiennes seems strangely reminiscent of James Fox (an actor his career seems to be aping more and more lately) in the undervalued King Rat and even if the film is never quite as stark, it surprisingly avoids historical revisionism or excuses for the Japanese. The opening sequence, though not excessively gory, is genuinely shocking in its callousness, and unlike Pearl Harbor the film makes no attempt to water down the brutality of the Japanese Army to those they deemed inferior races, Allied prisoners and Filipino civilians alike: it's hard to see this selling many tickets in Japan.
Curiously its biggest problem is its historical accuracy: the determination to (for the most part) avoid phoney heroics unfortunately isn't matched by an ability to make the long march to the camp particularly dramatic, the Rangers themselves barely registering as characters for much of the movie. At times this puts more weight on the prison camp sequences and a subplot with Connie Nielson's doctor smuggling drugs to the prisoners through the local underground (true but playing more like demographic-inspired fiction at times) than they can bear, with much of the middle of the film sagging, especially compared to the surprisingly powerful ending. As with most P.O.W. films, the actors look too healthy despite their best efforts and the desaturated photography has become too much of a war movie cliché to impress anymore, but there's a sincerity to the film and a pride in what these men did that carries it over many of its rough patches: it's hard not to feel moved by the lengthy archive footage of the real liberated prisoners and their rescuers at the end (the 2-disc director's cut DVD also includes also of powerful documentaries with veterans). One niggle though: while most of the cast make credible enough soldiers, filmmakers really should stop casting Dale Dye as officers - he may be the only real soldier in the picture, but he never convinces as one on screen and his cameos are starting to get as annoyingly gratuitous as Michael G. Wilson's in the Bond films.
Customer Rating:
Summary: excellent service and product
Comment: This is one of the finest films I have ever seen. I would recommend it to anyone. it is very compelling, because its true.
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