The Great Raid

Scott Johnson reviews The Great Raid, a movie based in part on the book Ghost Soldiers, the amazing (and to me theretofore unknown) story of a US Ranger battalion that staged an amazing rescue of 500 American POWs far behind Japanese lines during World War II.

More tellingly, Scott reviews the reviewers, including Steven Holden from "Rotten Tomatos":

Its scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend.

Contrary to the implication of Holden's statement, however, I don't think that the brutalization of American soldiers by the Japanese in the Pacific has ever been depicted anywhere near faithfully in a Hollywood film before.

1. Scott's right. I'm a big war movie buff, and I don't think I've seen a movie that did for Japanese atrocities against American POWs what Private Ryan did for D-Day, or Schindler's List did for the Holocaust.

2. Furthermore, Hollywood has been more than stinting in its treatment of anti-American atrocities, at least since the 1960's. One of the best war movies of the past 30 years was Lionel Chetwynd's Hanoi Hilton, a 1987 movie about the experiences of American POWs in North Vietnam. It was an unblinking look not only at torture and humiliation - but at the men who withstood it, in some cases for nearly a decade, and at the reasons they were successful at bearing up under it; their training, and their senses of duty and honor.

   Naturally, Hollywood reacted like someone had left a steaming pile on the buffet table. Part of it, I'm sure, was the swipe that the film took at Jane Fonda (although all the names in the film were changed, the major characters were recognizable - including the pseudo-Fonda character) - but mostly because it extolled the virtues that the right reveres, and that the left nervously shies away from.

   Expect no better - cinematic virtues aside, and I'll be the judge there - from Hollywood and the lefty media's response to The Great Raid.

   Posted by Mitch at August 15, 2005 06:13 AM | TrackBack