The Great Raid: Our Night With the Stars

A review in two parts:

Through my work for the federal government, and because some folks at my job acted as part-time consultants on the movie, I managed to see a screening of The Great Raid on Thursday, July 28. Actually, "screening" might be a bit misleading--it was more like the Washington D.C. premiere at Loews Uptown Theater. And since it is probably pretty rare that historians get to go to such glitzy events—I know it doesn't happen to me—I thought there might be some interest in what it was like.

In attendance for the movie were all of its stars, save Connie Nielson, and when my wife and I arrived, we walked past Joseph Fiennes and James Franco doing interviews outside the theater. If anyone cares, Fiennes looks a lot more like his brother Ralph in real life. We also saw Dale Dye, military advisor to the stars (and maybe the only person who came away from Alexander unscathed), hanging out next to the concession stand. We actually walked in on the red carpet—no one took our picture, can you believe it?—and headed up to the balcony to find seats. Then we sat there. And sat there. And sat there. The free water and soda flowed like rivers of, uh, water and soda. The hold-up, apparently, was that Senators Clinton and McCain were delayed in making their way over from work.

They kicked off the show by having a small Army band play a few World War II era songs—I definitely picked up a few notes from "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree"—followed by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pete Schoomaker saying a few words (through my work I actually helped the tiniest little bit with the speech). The head of Miramax and producer of the movie, Harvey Weinstein, introduced all of the actors and the director, John Rahl. They all got a little choked up talking about the story and what it meant to them to put it to film. We all got choked up when Rahl's voice cracked introducing his favorite World War II veteran, his dad. Senators Clinton and McCain arrived and said a few nice words about sacrifice and honor. Maybe it was all very predictable. Maybe moviemakers always get this way about their work. But I doubt it. There was a genuine sincerity about the endeavor. A genuine need to get it right, to set aside politics and make a movie worthy of the story it told. (More in the review below.)

It was all very cool. It also made watching and evaluating the movie that much more difficult. For one thing, the delayed start plus flowing water/soda issue became, how should I say this, more pressing as the movie went along. One must not take too much of an advantage of free drinks at premieres. Live and learn. A more concrete issue was that because of their proximity and because of how different they looked that night from up on the screen, I just could not help but think of the actors watching the movie. I found myself wondering about what James Franco thought of his performance in certain scenes. Even more strange was wondering how one of the Japanese actors must have felt when the crowd cheered when his character was killed. Sure he should be proud that his performance made the crowd hate his character, but still.

The upshot of all of this is that it has taken some serious reflection to come to any thoughts on the movie itself, and I reserve the right to change my mind once I see the movie again under different circumstances.

Without further ado, my review is here at Big Tent Extra.