Hart's War

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * )

The Hart of the title isn't Bruce Willis - whose face is biggest on the box - but Colin Farrell's greenhorn headquarters.

Never having seen action during the Allied advance after D-Day, he is captured, interrogated and chucked into a Stalag where the gruff Willis is the senior American officer.

This doesn't just want to be a POW movie flip-side to Band of Brothers, which it sometimes resembles in the early stages. It also wants to be a court-martial thriller with a sense of political irony.

Namely, when a couple of captured Black American fighter pilots turn up at the camp, racial tensions rise in the unsegregated American prisoner barracks.

That leads to an execution, a murder and a court-martial where Hart is ordered to defend one of the pilots for killing a white fellow POW. Willis is the president of the court and the Nazi commandant relishes playing puppetmaster to it all.

It's engaging enough as military courtroom drama in unusual circumstances, but as the trial starts making long speeches, Hart's War suddenly loses its urge to tell a fresh and complex story and reverts to a barrage of cliches about honour and nobility and comes with an excess of twists which fatally undermine its credibility. One for forgiving fans of war movies only.

* Rental video, DVD from today

* DVD extras: commentary by director and Willis.