dvd on tap

More timekillers. But pretty interesting.

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The Great Raid
dir. John Dahl

Of course, the main reason for renting this flick was to check out my kababayan, Cesar Montano make it in a fairly decent Hollywood project. Based on a couple of books detailing a little-known WWII rescue mission of POWs, The Great Raid showed up on my radar about 2 or 3 years ago when they announced Montano's inclusion in the film adaptation and the subsequently-hyped shooting scenes in Australia. Looking up John Dahl, I find out he has Rounders and Joyride to his credits. I have The Last Seduction waiting in the wings, and now I might check out Red Rock West.

Boasting of some name-droppables like Benjamin Bratt (Ms Congeniality, previously a Julia Roberts' boy toy), James Franco (the whiny-brat-known-as-the-Green-Goblin's-son, and soon a tough Navy man in the upcoming Annapolis) and Joseph-I-Am-A-Fiennes-Hear-Me-Roar (Shakespeare In Love), ..Raid is a nice, tidy little film that tries to honor the subject and still provide enough rip-roaring action scenes to keep the MTV/ADD generation interested (wait, they probably don't even know when was World War II). Since this was a WWII film, it does make sense to add more Filipino talent into the mix which I heartily applaud (Rez Cortez gets killed in 2 minutes, Ryan Eigenmann plays a profiteer, and I honestly did not see the purportedly-gay Paolo Montalban).

Towards the end of the war, 500 POWs were held in a Jap camp in Cabanatuan. Among them is a Major Gibson (Fiennes), whose secret love for a nurse, Margaret (Gladiator's Connie Nielsen), is the only thing keeping him alive. The Japanese military had gotten orders to terminate all prisoners then, given that it was only a matter of time before MacArthur returned and kicked all their asses. Luckily, a US Army Rangers battalion led by Lt. Col. Mucci (Bratt) and rising star Capt. Prince (Franco) took it upon themselves to stage a rescue mission before the prisoners get herded into pits and burned alive.

With the prisoners merely counting hours (especially Major Gibson who was battling malaria) , Margaret does her part by smuggling medicines to the camp via the Filipino resistance. This is of course, a dicey proposition as the Japs used any means necessary (like the traitorous makapili) to flush out the underground. Margaret even witnesses the massacre of her cohorts, including one Mina (Natalie Jackson Mendoza), whose spoken Tagalog is like by one raised in the US, but whose English has a distinct Filipino accent. That got me confused.


"Pay-bili nga pow ng iysang epol, may-nang."

Of course, the one who doesn't need to mask or accentuate his language skills is the wild card in the rescue mission - Capt Juan Pajota (Montano), who makes his appearance 48 minutes into the film ('it's about time', I remember yelling). He's still the character I remember in the times I've seen him - confident bordering on brash, yet exuding calm with a lot of heart. He does have a lot of speaking lines (cool!), and his English is exactly how a native-but-educated-enough Pinoy should be speaking it. Pajota probably worked with Americans (the book does seem to bear this out) so it probably wasn't out of character to have him one-up Bratt with "It was the bamboo telegraph that told me that you and your men were on your way here today ... sir." Astig!


Pajotang-ina! Si Kuya Cesar!! Woooohoooo!!!

If we have heroes, we should also have a villain - done here by Motoki Kobayashi as the fiendish Major Nagai, a kempetai commander who's in charge of the terminations. The rescue attempt itself - about the last 20 minutes of the film - proceeds at a snappy and breakneck pace (no slow-mos here) and looks realistic enough. Nagai, as most screen badguys do, gets his comeuppance in the end. Incredibly, there were only 2 casualties among the rescuers, and only one prisoner died, but after the rescue. You can guess who.


According to rumors, Fiennes actually contracted malaria to do his scenes

Saving Private Ryan, this isn't. But this is a lot more engrossing than The Thin Red Line.

In other news, this movie allowed Fiennes and Mendoza to become lovebirds in real life. O di ba!