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132 MINUTES | The raid was indeed great, but the movie is a debacle. On January 28, 1945, a unit of the yet untested Army Rangers set out to free more than 500 emaciated POWs from a Japanese camp in the Philippines. It remains the most successful operation of its kind ever, and to accomplish it the Rangers needed imagination, guts, and finesse. Not so director John Dahl, who falls back on the stodgiest narrative devices and generic clichés, reducing the colorful characters as described in books by William B. Brewer and Hampton Sides to stereotypes woodenly inhabited by Benjamin Bratt, James Fiennes, and James Franco. A bogus love story, an espionage subplot, and schmaltzy flag waving further mire the project, which picks up only with the well-produced and authentically detailed raid itself. A mini-master of such twisted noirs as The Last Seduction, Dahl seems more attuned to cynical losers than to the real-life red-blooded heroes of this forgotten exploit.
BY PETER KEOUGH
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