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Average User Score: 7 (20 sources)

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therockstop

-1

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I really like this movie because it was actually done on a small story from the war instead of a bigger battle like most are. One of best WW2 movies out there. You should watch it if you like war movies.

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Posted jul 21, 2008 1:55 am pt

minimax34

-1

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It's a great story and they did a so great job with this story in this movie. All the cast are fabulous and are perfect for the roles. The photography and direction is superb. I'm really sad to see the critics rating because this movie is about...
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It's a great story and they did a so great job with this story in this movie. All the cast are fabulous and are perfect for the roles. The photography and direction is superb. I'm really sad to see the critics rating because this movie is about real fact and a never told story.

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Posted feb 3, 2007 12:13 am pt

financeranger

-1

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This is a good movie that entertains both the casual military afficianado and the war movie guru!

The story is one of the greatest examples of this type of operation and the movie is balanced with emotional dilemas, action, and...
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This is a good movie that entertains both the casual military afficianado and the war movie guru!

The story is one of the greatest examples of this type of operation and the movie is balanced with emotional dilemas, action, and drama

I highly recommend this not as a historical source, but something to get the ones interest in the subject. Fire and maneuver just beautiful!

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Posted dec 11, 2006 7:29 am pt

• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  75
  The action is brilliant, the combat sharp and rattling, and the film follows the historical record more closely than most Hollywood films.

  by Michael Esposito | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  The Great Raid is perhaps more timely now than it would have been a few years ago, when "smart bombs" and a couple of weeks of warfare were supposed to solve the Iraq situation. Now that we are involved in a lengthy and bloody ground war there, it is good to have a film that is not about entertainment for action fans, but about how wars are won with great difficulty, risk, and cost.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  75
  Lacks the visceral sweep of "Saving Private Ryan." But Spielberg's story, for all its gut-wrenching intensity, was a fiction. Dahl's movie, slower in pace and conscious of its own artifice, addresses the same issues of courage and sacrifice - and tells a true story. That's worth something. In fact, it's worth a lot.

  by Steven Rea | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  While one might have wished for a better movie, and a few smarter decisions regarding the screenplay, generally it's a riveting, even inspirational account of an American feat of arms about which few know but about which many more should.

  by Stephen Hunter | Read Full Review »
• [+] Portland Oregonian
  
  67
  The film is much better as a ticking-clock action picture than as a story of human emotions, be they romantic, altruistic or base. So it's too bad that we have to wait so long for the actual raid to begin. When it does, it's a cracker.

  by Shawn Levy | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  67
  Truth be told, the film is routine: the kind of one-note war movie that Hollywood used to crank out by the dozens every year in the 1950s.

  by William Arnold | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  63
  The rousing success of the final 45 minutes cannot entirely counterbalance the stumbling uncertainty of the first 90 minutes.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Boston Globe
  
  63
  The Great Raid amounts to a noble failure. This is sad news for those of us who remain hopelessly partial to Dahl's mean streak. The failure we can live with. It's the noble part that will never do.

  by Wesley Morris | Read Full Review »
• [+] New York Daily News
  
  63
  Not a great movie, but it certainly does justice to the great historical event it dramatizes.

  by Jack Mathews | Read Full Review »
• [+] Miami Herald
  
  63
  With material like this, Samuel Fuller or David Lean might have fashioned an epic war movie for the ages, chock-full of hard-boiled characters and against-all-odds heroics. But in John Dahl's hands, The Great Raid never really lives up to its name, delivering everything you might expect from such a movie, but not an ounce more.

  by Peter Debruge | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  60
  Benjamin Bratt lacks the dynamism one would expect of the commanding officer of a U.S. Rangers rescue unit; James Franco, however, is solid in the less flashy role of the mission's mastermind, and as the POW leader Joseph Fiennes manages to be heroic while prettily languishing from malaria.

  by Andrea Gronvall | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  50
  This is a creditable but disappointingly draggy war epic. It should sizzle like a fuse, but instead plods along with methodical deliberation.

  by Ken Fox | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  50
  The Great Raid tells its story without irony, perspective or any leavening that would make it something other than an ordinary military-action caper.

  by Joel Selvin | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  
  50
  The picture's broad outline may be fact, but everything inside gets painted in a deep shade of bogus.

  by Rick Groen | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  50
  The film brings a spectacular but little-known chapter of World War II to the big screen with meticulous attention to period detail -- and almost none to compelling narrative.

  by Sheri Linden | Read Full Review »