"Hart's War"

The World War II genre is unique in film because it can be used to showcase virtually any human emotion or condition. Want irony? �Bridge on the River Kwai.� Anomie? �The Best Years of Our Lives.� Humor? �Catch 22.� Horror? �Saving Private Ryan.� Courtroom drama? �Judgment At Nuremberg.�

Because �Hart�s War� (a.k.a. �Justice�) tries to give us a little of everything, it doesn�t give us enough of any one thing, which renders it scattered, misleading and superficial instead of unified, focused and profound.

Lt. Tommy Hart (Colin Farrell), who was studying law at Yale prior to Pearl Harbor, is ordered to defend Lt. Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard), a Tuskegee Airman accused of murdering a fellow (white) inmate at a POW camp in Germany. Ranking Allied officer Col. William McNamara (Bruce Willis) presides over the court martial, which the inmates and their Nazi captors follow as closely as ack-ack tailing a B-17. McNamara is planning to destroy a nearby armaments factory; in his eyes the court martial is merely a diversion to keep camp commandant Visser (Marcel Iures) off the trail.

It�s also a major diversion for the audience. After a promising first 20 minutes, �Hart�s War� goes off in a thousand different directions and never really finds or resolves itself: Is it a commentary on racism and bigotry? Is it a peek into the workings of a court martial? Is it a story of one young man�s search for truth? Is it �Die Hard Does Deutschland�? Is it a parable for the importance of honor and duty? Is it a sacrifice-one-for-the-greater-good moral head-scratcher?

Answer: It�s all of this and less. When director Gregory Hoblit finally gets around to his preachy, voiced-over ending, we�re too frazzled and indifferent to care.

Despite some nice sequences of P-51s giving the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe hell, �Hart�s War� delivers too little too late.