The Great Raid

Pretty harmless spoilers in this post.

We saw "The Great Raid" tonight, generally a war movie about the rescue mission for the POWs in Nueva Ecija a few months before the recapture of the entire archipelago by the Allied Forces. Of course the local buzz highlights the Filipino actors involved in the movie (mainly Cesar Montano as a guerilla captain), which is fine because it's at least something we can be proud of.

It got respectable reviews including 3 stars from Roger Ebert.

Now here's my problem: I have seen the 10-part HBO miniseries Band of Brothers (BofB). It was brilliant and phenomenal. I loved it so much that I went out and reserved my copy of the DVD set (in a tin can box, might I add) weeks before it was released. Original copy, of course. It has everything one can want from a war epic.

Is it getting clearer now? Ok, i'll spell it out: It's hard to top that. In order to do so, it should be groundbreaking. The Great Raid wasn't really, but it was a better-than-average war movie, and as a Pinoy, I should be able to appreciate it more.

The raid itself doesn't compare to the drama in the BofB episode Bastogne, the riveting action in The Breaking Point, and certainly doesn't draw out as much emotion as the episode Why We Fight, which also about POWs (Holocaust survivors this time). But then again, you can only squeeze so much from a feature-length film.

Anyway, it's a nice film to watch, it's not a waste of your money. Hear Connie Nielsen speak a few Tagalog lines. See Dale Dye (the general) in yet another military acting role (since he's really a ranking officer in real life).

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The Tonight Show with Jay Leno has Avril Lavigne on. Good thing she got rid of the straight hair look. She looks much better with the curly locks. Although I don't know what the deal was with the devil horns.