It's bracing - especially now - to see a picture like Hart's War, which touches on the ethical quandaries underlying the waging of a just war.
But it only touches on them.
Hart's War tests how long a movie can leave viewers in limbo, and how many tricks it takes to pull them out of it. The picture fails on both counts, and ends on a jarring note of uplift. But it's absorbing and occasionally stirring right up to the final celebration of honor - as well as truth, justice and the American way.
Set in a German POW camp during World War II, the ironically titled Hart's War is named for Lt. Thomas Hart (Colin Farrell), a Yale law student in civilian life and a U.S. senator's son who isn't supposed to see combat. The film kicks into gear when the Germans ambush, torture and imprison him.
The top American officer at the POW camp, Col. William McNamara (Bruce Willis), pointedly assigns him a place in an enlisted man's bunk. When a murder threatens to disrupt McNamara's organization, Hart is ordered to defend a black flier, Lt. Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard), against the charge of killing a vicious racist, Sgt. Vic Bedford (Cole Hauser). If Scott did commit the murder, he had good reason - Bedford framed the only other black flier in the camp, and the Germans swiftly executed him.
Did Hart crack when the Germans first captured him? Is McNamara punishing him for it - or just for not coming clean about it? And why is McNamara so tight-lipped toward the accused killer, and so cagey about what he thinks of him? Is he merely a more polite racist than Bedford was?
Whether in a precinct, a barracks or a firehouse, Gregory Hoblit (who directed Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue before turning to features with such movies as Primal Fear and Frequency) knows how to depict the charged and intricate bonds among servicemen that require newcomers to be cautious - and that cause audiences to jump every time the novices stumble. The way screenwriters Billy Ray and Terry George have adapted John Katzenbach's 1999 thriller, the movie revels in the murk of hidden schemes and obscure motives.
Bedford, the camp scrounger, brings Hart a badly needed set of boots. But even before Bedford proves to be a racist, we wonder what price he will exact for the footwear. The movie is grayish blue and dirty-snow white, and this lowering atmosphere (established by Hoblit, cinematographer Alar Kivilo and production designer Lilly Kilvert) suits our depressed expectations of the characters. The exception is the German commandant, Col. Werner Visser (Marcel Iures), who turns out to be a fellow Yale man with a love for Mark Twain and jazz.
