You know the drill: wealthy son of privilege gets a cushy and hopefully violence-free military assignment during wartime. Eventually this soft-handed girly-man will come face to face with a grizzled warhorse (tooth-clenched cigar optional). Their two ideologies clash even as real war rages around them, and eventually both emerge as better men than they were before.
Luckily, Hart’s War has more on its mind than that. True, Tom Hart (Colin Farrell) has clearly not done a day’s work in his life. The most stressful part of his assignment during near-mythic The Battle of The Bulge involves delivering a case of champagne to field headquarters. But on that fateful delivery day, Hart gets stopped by Nazis disguised as Allied MPs. His attempt to escape only ends up in a ditch, lying bleeding on a field of frozen white corpses. By his standards, the tortures the Nazis put him through are rigorous, and after a few days he will do anything to put shoes on his tender feet.
The movie takes a stab at building suspense over what Hart did to get released from torture and into a regular stalag. As far as Colonel William McNamara (Bruce Willis), the ranking officer of the American prisoners, is concerned, the Nazis paid Hart thirty pieces of shoe leather. But really, Hart’s betrayal serves as nothing more than a macguffin to get him to the camp and to the issues really at hand: honor, strength of character, and racism.
Don’t believe the advertisements. Despite thrilling explosions delivered in 30-second spots, Hart’s War wants to be more of a think piece, wedging a courtroom drama in the midst of a prison camp. And it raises some interesting ideas.
Two members of the (now) famed Tuskegee Airmen are shipped to the camp and placed under Hart’s watch in the enlisted men’s quarters. There they face open hostility, particularly from Sergeant Bedford (Cole Hauser), a guy who bravely risks getting shot to hurl bread at the Soviet prisoners across the fence, but whose spirit of brotherhood is only one step above the Nazis. Bedford reveals his nastier side by planting a weapon in the black Lt. Archer’s bunk, “forcing” their German captors to execute him on the spot. So when the jerk ends up dead in the snow with Archer’s fellow Tuskegee Airman Lt. Scott (Terrence Howard) standing over him, the Nazis can only assume murder. And they can also only assume they have their man.
But McNamara demands a court martial, and because Hart was a second-year law student at Yale before the war, he gets appointed Scott’s counsel. And so begins a cat and mouse game among three officers: McNamara, Hart, and the head of the camp, Major Visser (a cadaverous Marcel Iures).
Despite the obvious lines drawn by the war, director Hoblit lets us enjoy Visser just enough to doubt who the real villains are. The character is a realist and a Yale grad himself, aware that war makes unlikely friends and enemies. Crucially to the theme, Visser also understands that any war death is both tragic and by its very nature necessary. When countries clash, sacrifices get made. The question Hoblit and novelist John Katzenbach pose is how to choose who gets sacrificed.
McNamara has his own answer for that: anybody who doesn’t measure up to his ideals. He may lecture the Germans on how Americans don’t make distinctions among races, but that’s only when Russian lives are at stake.
Yes, the explosions do occur, as the result of a German plane getting shot down over the camp. Clearing the wreckage sparks an idea in McNamara’s mind, and Hoblit keeps it from us for as long as possible. Though it becomes obvious to us far before Hart figures it out, it’s still just an excuse to tackle a larger theme.
Like all of Hoblit’s films so far, Hart’s War has a few twists and turns that keep it from being too routine. Most of them here come from the star power enlisted for the cast. Willis pulls his usual underplaying here, and it works pretty well up to a point. And as the prison commander, Iures resists the temptation to chew scenery. He smirks with the best of the screen villains, but underneath is a hollow sadness, made even a little tragic by how good Visser is at his job.
The real one to watch, though, is Hart himself. Colin Farrell will strike many as a newcomer, though Hollywood has been buzzing about him for over a year. Mostly, though, he has made movies with limited or no release, so the hype has almost engulfed him. But unlike such hyped heroes as Matthew McConaughey, Farrell is the real deal. He has a power and a presence, though it may be more suited to playing villainous roles. His conflicted Lieutenant really comes to life when trying to get out of trouble. If Farrell has a weakness, it lies in portraying outrage. And indeed, fanboys, Farrell starts shooting next month as Bullseye in the film Daredevil.
Ultimately, everything comes to a head that undercuts its message. Whether it be test screening damage or not, Hoblit opts for a finale that feels unsatisfying, but obviously easier than where the story really should have headed. Yet there’s enough presented here to provoke some discussion and make you wish for a deeper look. In the flurry of gung ho war movies that are now in vogue, it’s good to see one challenge the notion of our boys having been purely noble. And in this time of uncertainty, it’s also necessary to ponder the fact that sometimes the good guys do have to die in order to win. It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary.
