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Fourth generation military Col.
William McNamara (Willis) is imprisoned in a German POW camp. Still, as the
camp's highest-raking American officer, he commands his fellow inmates, keeping
a sense of honour alive in a place where honour is easy to destroy, all under
the dangerous, ever-watchful eye of German Col. Werner Visser. Never
relinquishing his duty as a soldier, McNamara is silently planning, waiting for
his moment to strike back at the enemy.
A murder in the camp gives him the chance to set a risky plan in motion. With a
court martial to keep Visser and the German guards distracted, McNamara
orchestrates a cunning scheme to escape and destroy a nearby munitions plant,
enlisting the unwitting help of young Lt. Tommy Hart (Farrell).
Facts about the film:
Production designer Lilly Kilvert created the POW camp in Hart's War which was
based on the 130 or more German camps that were used during World War II. The
camp, called Stalag VI, was constructed on 400 acres of land an hour's drive
outside Prague. Barracks and guard towers - just like the real thing - were
built. Kilvert based her design on months of research during which time she had
pored over films, photographs, books and documents about the POW camps. The
nearest town to the location was Milovice which had been a home to a Russian
army barracks.
Filming outside of Prague was carried out in freezing conditions. The
conditions were particularly arduous for Colin Farrell - who plays Lieutenant
Tommy Hart - because in several scenes in the POW camp he has no shoes or
socks. During the first night of filming the camp was hit by a blizzard, which
only added to the chilling look of the prisoners' compound. The result at the
film location was good enough to impress former POW Nicholas Katzenbach and his
son John - who wrote the novel Hart's War ? when they visited filming. Nicholas
Katzenbach said hat walking through the movie version of the camp reawakened
memories of the 27 months that he had spent as a prisoner of war.
One of the most complex sequences in Hart's War is just as POWs arrive in a
packed train, it is attacked by American aircraft because the pilots don't know
they are POWs because the markings on the train are covered by snow. That scene
- which was filmed by 12 cameras - meant a lot of complicated explosions and
the use of two vintage P-51 planes that were supplied by specialist outfit
Flying Pictures.
Four thousand outfits were made for the actors and extras featured in Hart's
War. The military uniforms represented seven different countries, including the
USA, Britain and Germany. The outfits were sourced from as far afield as
Mexico, Belgium and Japan. Authenticity was vital throughout the making of
Hart's War. Not only were all the uniforms painstakingly researched, the film
makers even got samples of the sort of Red Cross kits that were sent to the POW
camps. One night during filming about 15 of the actors - including Bruce
Willis, it was his idea - stayed in the POW barracks to get a clearer idea of
what conditions must have been like for the prisoners.
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