I am a huge fan of Hampton Sides’ book “Ghost Soldiers”, yet I had no idea that there was a movie adaptation of it debuting this week! That’s because they changed the name to… blech… The Great Raid.
Ghost Soldiers is the true story of an Army Ranger expedition led by Col. Henry Mucci (I liked the guy so much I actually based a character in “Metro Med” on him). He is tasked with finding a way to rescue 500 Allied POWs from a Japanese camp in the Philippines and doing it in 2 days. If he fails to make that deadline, it is predicted that at that point the Allies will have advanced and the retreating Japanese will kill every POW there, as they have done in other camps in the declining days of WWII.
The movie opened this last weekend, though it is not yet playing in Rochester, MN. Rest assured I’ll have a review if it plays here. “The Great Raid” is actually based on both Ghost Soldiers and another book about the same incident. Turns out this movie was greenlit in 2001 and was finished in 2002, but was put on the shelf due to Miramax’s problems. (Apparently they are known for having numerous finished projects sitting on the shelf.)
Sadly, the movie has been released with little advertising and a rather lacklustre trailer, and it is not doing well. Libertas has an interview with the producer and a review.