First and foremost, I suppose, is that it's a World War II picture about integrity entering the marketplace after September 11. Or perhaps, in monetary terms for perennial underdog studio MGM, is that it's a Bruce Willis is-he-a-good-guy, is-he-a-bad-guy hard-ass action story that cuts together nicely as a thirty-second television spot.

But as the movie begins, it's notable as an art film, a kind of journey into the dark of day, where daylight's a matter of relative darks, shot with such wet, rainy mood you'd swear the cinematographer was a veteran of Polish cinema. (In fact, the tremendously versatile Alar Kivilo is Finn, and shot the equally chilly "A Simple Plan.") But after the sleight of hand of a lovely opening action sequence, a jeep-machine-gun-and-airplane battle cut together from stellar selection of compacted focal lengths, telling, eccentric camera placements and dazzling bits of action detail, we're introduced to Tommy Hart, an earnest young AmerIrish haircut with a shaky accent who's on a train to a German POW camp in the last days of World War II. We might hope for a revisiting of the wartime misadventures of "The Dirty Dozen" or "Stalag 17." But it doesn't get better: we're in for a spoiled pretty-boy against the system thriller. ("An Officer and a Preppie," anyone?) But we are not yet at the end of the line. In fact, director Gregory Hoblit ("Primal Fear," "Fallen") sets us up for a strenuous courtroom drama, a court-martial tribunal assembled to try a soldier who is blatantly innocent for murder. Why does Willis' sober Col. William McNamara, who runs the barracks of officers and enlisted men want this man tried, convicted, dispensed with? Plot twists ensue, few fresh, none believable.

Set almost entirely inside the camp, "Hart's War" about as thrilling as watching television with a Tourette's-worthy complement of F-words. Ah, but then the truest agenda is revealed: We are watching a message movie. At this late date "Hart's War" assures us that racism is wrong. Can one man's sacrifice change the lives of his fellow soldiers, his fellow man? Excellent topic. Ripe with drama. Terrence Howard, a talented black actor shoehorned into a cardboard role, does all he can do with the mush he's given to speak. But the script is forty-year-old nonsense that would have been insulting in the mid-1960s when Sidney Poitier was the first, but sadly, not last bearer of such upstandingly righteous roles. You can imagine Hoblit with fellow director Frank Darabont, having cool martinis at Hollywood Boulevard's Musso & Frank Grill, discussing the potential of the Noble Negro as a plot device.

Hoblit's stately horrors are accompanied by a score by Rachel Portman ("The Full Monty") and the production design is by Lily Kilvert. It's interesting that such a movie has two key collaborators who are women, yet it just shows they can get down in the dirt and do second-rate work as well as a man. "Fuck you!" as Willis gets to say in "Die Hard"-grimace harder mode, "What the fuck would you know about duty?"

Movies can be many things, but they are all too often only acts of representation, of reheating clichés, rather than being works of witness. A movie about integrity should leave you more to ponder than the stability of Willis' hairpiece in a series of gusts, gales and moments of cartooned anger.

"Hart's War" opens Friday.

Also by Ray Pride

AUTUMNAL CRAFT
The only viewers who might be offended by "Collateral Damage" are those who are offended by mediocrity. Arnold treks to the jungles of Colombia, goes through a series of incredible coincidences, evades an incredible series of munitions lobbed toward his huge head, meets an unlikely series of character actors and eventually saves the day after a neck-wrenching series of plot twists.
(2002-02-07)

SPRUNG
Bucktown's Spring restaurant is one of the most celebrated of the past year's openings. Seven months in, it's exceeded the expectations of partners Sue-Kim Drohomyrecky, Peter Drohomyrecky and 34-year-old chef Shawn McClain. After seven well-received years as chef/partner at Evanston's four-star Trio, McClain wanted to expand on what he knew as both manager and a chef, and to work with innovative cuisine in a more affordable setting.
(2002-02-07)

UNSEASONED
The last time I flew into New York, the 767 rode low over the lights of Manhattan, as if tugged gently along the beaded arterial glow of Broadway. It's a sooty dusk this December day, not from smoke, but from fog and shattered light. It is as if this spectacle were composed of albumen and platinum and memory, like a Stieglitz print on a clean, well-lighted gallery's wall.
(2002-01-31)

A THOUSAND WORDS
December in SoHo: two storefronts, a former agnes b. for women store, are no longer neat with fashion, but swollen with sorrow and torrents of imagery, hanging from walls and wires, with clusters of New Yorkers comparing their own memories (or evidence) of those moments on September 11 and afterward.
(2002-01-31)

SLUSH LIFE
(2002-01-24)

SCARY MOVIE
(2002-01-24)

FIRE FROM ABOVE
(2002-01-17)

LISTING CRAFT
(2002-01-10)

FICTION REVIEW
(2002-01-10)

VALET SPARKING
(2002-01-03)

GOOD GRIEF
(2002-01-03)

MANNERISM
(2001-12-27)