Grade: B

Verdict: Worth a salute just for trying to be more complex than your average film.

Details: Starring Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell and Terrence Howard. Directed by Gregory Hoblit. Rated R for language and violence. Two hours, four minutes.

See it: Local theaters and showtimes for Hart's War

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: The first thing you need to know about Bruce Willis' new World War II movie, "Hart's War," is Willis doesn't play Hart. He plays Col. William McNamara, the ranking officer at a German POW camp in a chilly corner of Belgium in 1944.

Lt. Tommy Hart is played by Colin Farrell, the soulful Irish actor from "Tigerland." A Senator's son who's never seen the inside of a foxhole, Hart finds himself plunged into the war after volunteering for a seemingly harmless chauffeuring job. He's sent first to a brutal Gestapo torture chamber, then on a grueling forced march to Stalag VI, McNamara's camp.

Hart is assigned to bunk with enlisted men instead of officers (McNamara says there's no room in his hut, though we clearly see empty beds), and is befriended by Sgt. Bedford (Cole Hauser), who seems like a pretty decent guy until two shot-down Tuskegee airmen are also assigned to the barrack. Then he spews the sort of vicious racial epithet that begins with the letter "n." But the grounded officers can handle his venom. When Bedford calls one of the black airmen, Lt. Scott (Terrence Howard), "boy," Scott snaps back, "That's Lieutenant Boy."

The plot proper kicks in when one of the prisoners is murdered and Scott is accused of the crime. McNamara talks the camp's spookily urbane commandant, Col Visser (Marcel Iures) — who likes jazz, cognac and Mark Twain — into letting them hold a court martial. Then he appoints Hart as Scott's defense lawyer.

What makes "Hart's War" stand out from so many other films is that it can't be boiled down to a five-word pitch. Yeah, it's "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17" meet "A Soldier's Story" and "A Few Good Men." But there's also a nice touch of Jean Renoir's classic "The Grand Illusion" in the way Col. Visser seeks to bond with Hart because, after all, they're both Yalies. The misleading trailers make you think this is an action flick; in fact, it's more of a confined courtroom drama. The writers may have thrown in a few too many plot strands. But director Gregory Hoblit not only relishes movies with a twist — he did "Frequency" and "Primal Fear" — but he knows how to handle them, too.

Intelligence and restraint are the main reasons to see "Hart's War." The problem is Willis. Not because he's bad; he isn't, though he tends toward some one-note scowling. It's because the script doesn't give McNamara enough juicy scenes. We 're supposed to feel conflicted about McNamara and we do. Is he a closet racist? Does he put himself or his men first? Stuff like that. Willis needed a chance to show us something that keeps us even more off balance in evaluating him and his motives. And he doesn't get it.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution