MOVIE SCENE
Bruce Willis gives commanding performance in solid 'Hart's War'

By Marshall Fine
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

HART'S WAR (Rated R for profanity and graphic violence) Three and One-Half Stars (Good-to-Excellent) A callow young officer, caught by the Nazis and sent to a prison camp, must contend with a flinty commanding officer who has a secret agenda of his own. It works, mostly, thanks to the performance of Bruce Willis and in spite of Colin Farrell. Also starring Terrence Howard. Directed by Gregory Hoblit. MGM, 124 mins.

In the mold of "Stalag 17" and "The Great Escape," "Hart's War" is solid filmmaking, a big-budget World War II drama built around a tale of bait-and-switch. For almost two hours, you'll be convinced that the film is about one thing when, in fact, it is about quite another.

Although his face is in all the ads, Bruce Willis is not the Hart of the title. The movie isn't even about his character, though he figures in it prominently.

The film focuses instead on Lt. Thomas Hart (Colin Farrell), a senator's son who is working safely at an Allied battalion headquarters in Europe after D-Day. He is being kept far from the action on his father's orders.

On a seemingly routine errand to the front, however, he is ambushed and captured by German troops. After interrogation, he is sent to a German POW camp, where the ranking officer among the prisoners is Col. William McNamara (Willis).

McNamara is tough-as-nails and no-nonsense. Extremely frustrated by being on the sidelines for the war, he makes it his duty to maintain military discipline among the prisoners and to spar with the camp commandant, Colonel Werner Visser (Marcel Iures), to make sure the prisoners are decently treated.

He doesn't have much time for the pampered Hart. Spotting him instantly for the untested dilettante that he is, McNamara puts Hart in a barracks with enlisted men rather than the officers' quarters. He muddies the waters further by assigning two new officers — black pilots from the Tuskegee Air Corps — to Hart's barracks, triggering a racist reaction from some of the men.

When one of the prisoners is murdered and one of the black pilots (Terrence Howard) appears to be the culprit, McNamara demands that Visser allow him to try the prisoner under military law. Although an execution seems a foregone conclusion, McNamara is buying time, though initially it's not clear why.

He appoints Hart as defense counsel, then tosses one obstacle after another in his path. Hart complains that McNamara (who heads the team of court-martial judges) is trying to railroad the young pilot and finds surprising inner reserves for his chess match with the tough, demanding commander.

In fact, there are other irons in McNamara's fire, all calculated to help him get back to what he was bred to do by a family history of West Point training: wage war. As McNamara, Willis practically vibrates with anger at his impotence in the face of his Nazi captors and his commitment to maintaining honor in the face of overwhelming odds.

"You think the war will wait for you," Visser taunts him, "but it won't."

It's a flinty, thoughtful performance by Willis, as this tough, calculating soldier. Unfortunately, despite a lean script by Billy Ray and Terry George and taut direction by Gregory Hoblit ("Frequency"), "Hart's War" suffers from a weak Hart. Irish actor Colin Farrell, who has inexplicably become a flavor of the moment in Hollywood, is even more callow than his character, and bland to boot.

Thankfully, the rest of this movie swirls around him with such energy that Farrell can't slow it down. He's serviceable enough to let "Hart's War" work in spite of him.

Rated R for profanity and graphic violence.