Best movie ever!

Awesome Movie

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is just another propaganda movie for the world. Yankees are brave, righteous, have honor, and so on... So they are the good guys. On the other hand, Japanese are evil scumbags who are serving Lucifer. Not as big propaganda as Schindler's List which lies to you with every of it's pixels but this is a propaganda movie too. Just ironic to see these propaganda movies. Yankees and British killed more then 8 million civilians with their terror bombings. They just bombed civilian districts to the ground. Just to kill enemy civilians in Europe and Japan. They made this genocide heartlessly. Isn't that a propaganda to show these guy as heroes? They dropped two nuclear bombs into two well populated Japanese cities. How can they be really heroes? Also, they gathered all Asians into concentration camps in the US and after that they showing us German and Japanese C.Camps? If this isn't propaganda then what propaganda is? Just an awful propaganda movie. Yankee idiots will like it, I think.

After the American evacuation of the Philippines following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, thousands of American servicemen were abandoned to the Japanese enemy, finding themselves facing brutal conditions in Japanese POW camps, and feeling forgotten by their country. "The Great Raid" is the portrayal of a rescue mission to save five hundred of those POWs at the Cabanatuan camp before they're killed by their captors, as the Americans begin to close in during the closing days of the war.As far as I can recall there haven't been very many movies depicting conditions in Japanese POW camps. "Bridge On The River Kwai" springs to mind, but this is the only other one I think I've come across. It's always hard to judge the accuracy of how the enemy is portrayed in a movie like this. In this case, though, we do know that the Japanese were in fact brutal captors. Surrender was the ultimate dishonour, and prisoners, therefore, were seen as deserving of neither honour nor respect. The conditions portrayed in the camp, therefore, were believable and probably historically accurate.The portrayal of camp conditions is one of the highlights of the movie. The other is the actual raid carried out. It was portrayed in great detail and, again, in a very believable way. The basic problem with this movie, though, is that it repeatedly seems to get bogged down. Frankly, when the movie strays from those two subjects it just isn't that interesting, and all the various sidebars end up making this longer than it needed to be. The character of Margaret Utinski (played by Connie Nielsen) was especially problematic. Utinski was a real person - and a winner of the Medal of Honour - but there are historical questions about her life, and there was certainly no romance involved in her actions, as is suggested throughout the movie. Aside from Nielsen, the cast were fine, but in all honesty no one stood out to me as outstanding. As I've suggested, there are certainly aspects of this movie that make it worthwhile viewing, but it certainly can't be mistaken for a masterpiece. (6/10)

I was disappointed by this movie. It seemed like one overacted, trite scene after another. I really was waiting for someone to put their wrist to their forehead and gaze off into the distance in dramatic pose, a la the silent movie era actors. All the other elements were present- good actors, cinematography wasn't bad, great story as background- but the poor script and overacting never let it get off the ground, no tension ever builds, there is absolutely no character development whatsoever, and the movie drags on towards an ending. I think this is more of a drama/chick flick than a war movie, or even adventure tale. There are plenty of much better war movies out there, don't waste your time with this one as I had a hard time just writing ten lines about it.

I have not read the book, though I will now consider it. It's bitterly ironic that a new film dealing with a seldom told piece of recent history will be so under-appreciated. I purchased this on DVD along with three other war movies that not an awful lot of people know, and this was one of the two of them that I had never heard of before. Apart from Joy Ride, which is a reasonable enough horror flick, I haven't watched anything else by this director, but he's clearly talented. This is engaging and interesting from start to finish. The editing and cinematography are excellent. This has intense and exciting sequences, and it's certainly not boring for a second. It's well-paced throughout. The plot develops nicely throughout. Acting is great, ignore the fact that there are next to no "names" in this. It is also very notable that this is fair to both sides, and without toning down the atrocities(...any more than most things coming out of Hollywood do). No one is demonized, and the facts are presented almost without exception. The production values leave nothing to be desired. On the DVD is an informative commentary track by several important crew members, as well as a handful of trailers. There is gruesome, bloody violence, disturbing content and infrequent moderate to strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone who is old and mature enough to handle it. 7/10