Early reviews on ‘Great Raid’ favorable
Though “The Great Raid,” a drama about a legendary rescue of American POWs in World War II, opens today, director John Dahl already has gotten some pretty good reviews from the people he believes matter most.
“The reaction has been pretty gratifying,” says Dahl, who screened the film in advance for military men and women in Detroit. “We figured that would be our toughest audience, and if we passed muster there, we would at least have a base to build on.”
Dahl is understandably concerned that the movie will have a difficult time attracting people to theaters. While most young Americans may know about Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust, he says, far fewer know much about the war in the Pacific, “beyond Pearl Harbor, for which I have Michael Bay to thank, I guess.” (Bay directed the 2001 epic “Pearl Harbor.”)
“But I don’t know if your average twentysomething even knows about the battles in the Philippines, much less the story of the Ghost Soldiers,” Dahl says. “From one perspective, that’s good, because it means they won’t already know the ending. But it also means we’ll have a hard time convincing them it’s something they’ll want to see.”
The story told in “The Great Raid” is one of the most remarkable in military history. As recounted in a prologue edited from actual military and newsreel footage, in December 1941, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army invaded the Philippines. After three months of relentless assault on U.S. forces, Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines, issuing his famous “We will return” pledge.
In the wake of his departure, there were mass surrenders, and the Japanese initiated what became known as the Bataan Death March, in which thousands of U.S. soldiers were marched 60 miles or more in grueling heat to POW camps.
When Army intelligence learned that the Japanese were murdering prisoners at the malaria-ravaged camps, Army Rangers, with the help of the Philippine underground resistance, mounted a rescue mission for 500 prisoners being held at Camp Cabantuan.
“I was intrigued, because my father had served in the Philippines in the war, and he had a good friend who survived the death march, but I didn’t really know much about it,” Dahl says. “Like a lot of WWII vets, he didn’t talk much about what happened. He simply didn’t want to go back there.”
Dahl hopes that his effort to make a “movie that honors the soldiers and the sacrifices made by people like my dad” is not ignored.
“Regardless, I feel privileged to tell the story,” he says. “These were brave, brave people, Americans and Filipinos, who deserve to be recognized – and honored. I hope I did them justice.”