‘Raid’ an old-fashioned hero saga

{LDQUO}The Great Raid” chronicles the true story of a daring mission

by Army Rangers to rescue 500 American prisoners of war from a

Japanese prison camp in World War II.

The ads for this movie emphasize the battle scenes, but most of

the story focuses on the ordeal of the prisoners and the fearful

tension of civilian life in the occupied Philippines. These harsh

realities are presented with a subtle hand.

The lingering camera work and authentic set designs and costumes

are reminiscent of “The English Patient.” Like that film, “The Great

Raid” centers on the lives of one man and one woman caught up in

world-changing trauma.

The slowly developing plot and the production standards seem to be

from another era. At the same time, the special effects in the combat

scenes are state-of-the-art in gritty realism.

Director John Dahl has crafted a classic war movie with

old-fashioned values that could have starred Henry Fonda and Robert

Mitchum. Joseph Fiennes is outstanding as the thoughtful ranking

officer in the POW camp. Connie Nielson is well-cast as the brave

nurse who loves him. She puts her life at risk, using her Manila

hospital job to help the resistance get medical supplies to dying

prisoners.

Be warned: There are some disturbing scenes as prisoners and

civilians exposed in the operation are brutally executed.

As the lovers’ long-distance intrigue plays out, we also watch the

progress of the Army Rangers on their 30-mile trek to reach the camp.

The raid is finally carried out with gripping action and military

precision.

Some viewers may be disappointed that all the big war scenes don’t

take place until the final 30 minutes. But with so many summer movies

full of mindless noise and nonsense, “The Great Raid” stands out for

its intelligent historical perspective.

* JOHN DEPKO is a Costa Mesa resident and a senior investigator

for the Orange County public defender’s office.

‘Grizzly Man’: grisly fate well-documented

{LDQUO}They will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will

chop me up into pieces, I’m dead. So far, I persevere, I persevere.”

These are the eerily prophetic words of Timothy Treadwell in the

extraordinary documentary “Grizzly Man.”

For 13 summers, Treadwell -- a self-avowed protector of grizzly

bears -- camped out alone among them in the Katmai National Park and

Preserve in Alaska. A failed actor with a Prince Valiant haircut, he

obsessively filmed the bears for the last five of those years,

casting himself as a heroic, vengeful, mystical warrior who

considered the animals his friends.

Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog was given access to Treadwell’s

100 hours of video footage. Using these tapes as well as interviews

of those closest to him, Herzog has assembled an unsentimental,

disturbing, sometimes humorous portrait of a man whose reckless

idealism belied his struggles with inner demons.

There is some remarkable footage of the bears and of a family of

foxes who were almost pets.

But the most fascinating images were those of the manic Treadwell

himself, whether railing obscenities at society and the National Park

Service, or sweet-talking the bears.

Herzog does not admire Treadwell, but he does give him respect as

a fellow filmmaker. In his lilting German accent, Herzog suggests

nature is not kind and benevolent, but hostile and murderous.

In the autumn of 2003, Treadwell was decapitated, chopped into

bits and pieces, and eaten by a bear. The bear also killed his

girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, who was making her third trip with him.

Ironically, their gruesome fate caused the death of one of the

animals Treadwell had vowed “with his last breath” to protect.

* SUSANNE PEREZ lives in Costa Mesa and is an executive assistant

for a financial services company.

Bones in the bayou is satisfactory suspense

The so-called “horror/suspense-thriller” film genre hadn’t caught

my interest until recently. I had never found myself wanting to see a

movie that would leave me in uninterrupted fright, with my

imagination as a casualty.

This is key to how I understood “The Skeleton Key.”

In the film, a young hospice worker, Caroline (Kate Hudson), finds

herself in a New Orleans bayou, charged with taking care of a dying

man named Ben Deveu (John Hurt). His wife (Gena Rowlands) lingers as

the audience’s primary source of information as to why her husband is

the way he is.

It is not until Caroline uses her skeleton key to unlock the

Deveus’ attic that she realizes what really happened to Ben and

begins to uncover the truth behind his condition.

There is also the history of the servants, whose lives and

intentions are not revealed until the entire film has run its course.

Somewhere in this tangle of characters is a lawyer (Peter Sarsgaard),

but I cannot say much more about him than that.

It would be misleading to say that this was a good horror film,

because I do not know what would allow such a film to be put in that

category. All I know is the buildup for what’s considered the

unpredictable ending was choreographed in such a way that it was

difficult to know what would happen next.

It was a good film in the sense that the audience found itself in

some sort of maze of mystery that was solved piece by piece, but I

did not find the plot intricate enough to sustain my attention.

I would call it two hours of satisfactory suspense.

* SARA SALAM is a student at Corona del Mar High School.