The Great Raid Critic Reviews

A plodding, squeaky-straight Time-Life tribute to the greatest generation, the movie plays like a commemorative plaque.Read the full review

This is a movie for people more interested in the subject matter than its dramatic presentation.Read the full review

The rousing success of the final 45 minutes cannot entirely counterbalance the stumbling uncertainty of the first 90 minutes.Read the full review

For all its noble intentions, its striving for authenticity, its unblinking look at the savagery of war, The Great Raid is far more dutiful than dramatic.Read the full review

The Great Raid tells its story without irony, perspective or any leavening that would make it something other than an ordinary military-action caper.Read the full review

Just about any golden age Hollywood hack could have made a zestier drama about one of the greatest rescue missions in U.S. military history.Read the full review

A lumbering, disappointingly bland war movie.Read the full review

This overlong march will bore all but the most nobly patriotic.Read the full review

The Great Raid is perhaps more timely now than it would have been a few years ago, when "smart bombs" and a couple of weeks of warfare were supposed to solve the Iraq situation. Now that we are involved in a lengthy and bloody ground war there, it is good to have a film that is not about entertainment for action fans, but about how wars are won with great difficulty, risk, and cost.Read the full review