by MARK SLUTSKY

With Red Rock West and The Last Seduction, John Dahl established himself as a great director of tight little neo-noirs. But those were back in the early '90s, and the past decade has been less than kind to the man. Dahl's last debatably "good" movie was the prescient poker pic Rounders, which has its fans. And while I imagine I'd be pretty happy running into it on late-night TV, I wasn't such a fan of it when it came out in '98. Since then he's directed 2001's Joy Ride, which started out okay and then stopped being okay halfway through. And now, there's The Great Raid.

This latest effort is inspired by actual events. Near the end of WWII, as the Allies took the Philippines, Japanese forces prepared to execute nearly 500 American POWs they'd been holding in the Cabanatuan labour camp. A small group of American soldiers led a raid on the camp, hoping to save their brothers-in-arms. Based on the books The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Ghost Soldiers (by William B. Breuer and Hampton Sides, respectively), Dahl's film follows three narrative strands: the soldiers doing the raiding (led by Benjamin Bratt and James Franco), the imprisoned soldiers needing the raiding (spiritually led by Joseph Fiennes), and the Filipino resistance in Manila, largely represented by non-Filipino Connie Nielsen.

Though the movie takes place over five days, it feels a lot longer than that. It was perhaps not wise to try to give this movie an epic scope - after all, it's called The Great Raid, so you want to see some great raiding! All the skipping back and forth between the players slows down the pace to an unacceptable crawl. What should have been a lean, mean, POW-rescuing machine instead feels like what it is, an over-earnest international co-production getting unceremoniously dumped in the August dead zone. Which is too bad. Once upon a time, Dahl could've maybe shaped this material into something compelling and dark, instead of blandly heroic and faux-noble. This movie really could've been made in the year it's set in, right down to the irredeemably evil, stock Japanese characters. The real-life Great Raid surely deserved its title; this movie doesn't.

The Great Raid opens Friday, Aug. 12

>> Movie Listings