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August 13, 2005
The Great Raid, my view
This movie is worth seeing and furthermore, worth seeing on the big screen. Dale Dye is the military advisor(he was the advisor in Saving Private Ryan as well as a bunch of other military movies...he's very good about making them get the details right) and aside from him, I didn't recognize a single name in the movie. It struck me as someone wanting to do a movie without any more hoopla than the men involved in it likely felt at the time. It was very, very believable, from the reactions of the men that had been locked up for 3 years, to the sounds of the bullets being fired during combat. I was never under fire during my service but we took part in live fire exercises in which you are advancing on a position "underneath" live rounds that are going just a few feet over your head...it was enough to make me want to lose control of certain bodily functions and those bullets weren't ever aimed for me. The movie started out slow, told you what the situation was, what the goal was and then it took you through the execution of it. Very realistic, yet, not too much realism. It reminded me a little of the old WWII movies where you see the guy shot and go down but not all the extra stuff(bodily fluids and parts) flying out like some movies think need to be done. Don't get me wrong, a little of that is acceptable and perhaps necessary, but please...not all the time. It was rated R because it was war, but I think it could have easily gone PG-13(I just looked at the imdb website and it says it's PG-13, but my ticket says R)...not that I understand the rating system. I saw this with a friend of mine and we both left the theatre feeling like we had seen a very accurate depiction of a true story, one that was worthy of us telling our friends about. Today, that's saying something.
The Great Raid...go see it.
Posted by james at August 13, 2005 10:42 PM
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Comments
Was Willie Nelson in "The Great Raid"?
Posted by: GumboFilé at August 18, 2005 12:46 AM
Nope, he wouldn't shave his beard off. I mean, hey, even the Lt. Col. shaved his mustache off for the mission...
That would have been cool, Willie in the Great Raid, walking along with the Rangers singing "On the road again" or "Pancho and Lefty". Yeah, that would have been pretty cool.
Posted by: SonofThunder at August 19, 2005 03:52 PM