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The movie, a stock already completed by 2002, is about a fact-based US military rescue mission on their some 500+ Prisoners of War (POW) kept by the Japs in the Philippines in a 5-day period from 27 Jan to 31 Jan 1945 during the WWII. Director John Dahl frames the story essentially from the perspective of a key character, military strategist Captain Bob Robert Prince (James Franco) and uses his voice-over to strengthen his first person involvement in the plot. The adoption of this ethnographic approach (viewing from within the 6th Army Rangers, the US rescue force) enhances the degree of trustworthiness and persuasiveness of the story. Dahl also uses prolonged montages of documentary footages and voice-over to deliver the background situation of the allies and the Japs in a cost-effective and condensed manner, both at the expository sequence and in the epilogue.

The first two-thirds of the film do not come with any battle scene (other than the footage) but locate the audience in the development of a multiplicity of events leading to the rescue mission in great details instead. Dahl chooses to use a triangulation of plots in the narrative structure by proliferating the line into (1) the lives of the POWs, with Major Gibson (Joseph Fiennes) being the leader, and the Japs in the Cabanatuan POW camp; (2) the detailed mobilization of the rescue force led by Lit. Colonel Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) and assisted by strategist Captain Prince and (3) Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen) and her Philippine counterparts in Manila in their underground anti-Jap ploys to save the POWs. Story progression along these 3 parallel plots is slow but highly readable and tasteful as suspense (e.g., Will Gibson's subordinates be executed by the Japs? Will the underground gangs of Margaret be discovered? Will the 6th Rangers' rescue plan work?) is built at certain intervals along the plot progression.

Unlike "Saving Private Ryan" (Dir: Steven Spielberg, 1998) and "Black Hawk Down" (Dir: Ridley Scott, 2001) in which the audience are flood-presented with battle scenes and violence sequences, this film delivers moderately violent battle sequences in its final third. It is a rare battle movie in the recent years that brings down-to-earth gun fires and army inventory mobilization into mise-en-scene without an overwhelming reliance on CG. Regardless of the belief in the stated theme "POWs are left behind but not forgotten", this authenticated mission with a fatal casualty of only 2 in the history of the WWII is a good choice for movie-goers of the genre.

註：本評論純屬影評作者個人意見，並不代表本網立場。
Note: This views presented in this review is solely the views of the critic who wrote it and do not represent the stance of our website.

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