News-Info-Alerts

Re: 2 Films Based on POW In Production

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 06, 2002

"Hollywood tells Bridgeport hero's tale

2 movies to feature WWII hero Bratt, Cruise to portray Bridgeport-born Mucci
By JOE MEYERS jmeyers@ctpost.com

You've probably driven on the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway thousands of times without thinking about who the road was named for.

A year from now, however, the sign marking the stretch of Route 25 from Bridgeport to Newtown will probably attract more notice, with the opening of the first of two planned movies dealing with the Bridgeport-born World War II hero.

The Miramax production of "The Great Raid" featuring former "Law and Order" star Benjamin Bratt commenced filming in Australia two weeks ago.

"Minority Report" director Steven Spielberg and star Tom Cruise are expected to reteam for another movie that will include Mucci's story

"Ghost Soldiers"

for which DreamWorks has not yet set a production date.

The studio reports that a first draft screenplay has been completed by Josh Friedman (who wrote "Chain Reaction').

"Ghost Soldiers" is tentatively slated to be released during the summer of 2004.

The films are adaptations of two different books dealing with Mucci's daring rescue of 500 American soldiers from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines near the end of the World War II.

The prisoners were the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March after the American surrender of the Philippines.

The Bratt vehicle now in front of the cameras is based on "The Great Raid on Cabanatuan: Rescuing the Doomed Ghosts of Bataan and Corregidor" by military historian William B. Breuer.

The Spielberg-Cruise picture will be derived from the best-selling "Ghost Soldiers" by Hampton Sides (just published in paperback by Anchor Books), which takes a broader view of the situation in the Philippines during the war, including the terrible mistreatment of the Americans in the prison camp.

"The Great Raid" company is currently filming in Bribie Island, which is about an hour outside Brisbane.

The movie is being jointly produced by Miramax and the Australian company Village Roadshow.

Bratt is being supported by a number of Aussie players including Craig McLachlan, Robert Mammone and Sam Worthington.

Director John Dahl, whose credits include "Red Rock West" and the Miramax production of "Rounders" with Matt Damon, has converted a stretch of sand dunes on the island into the prison camp set.

The real-life Mucci was charismatic as well as heroic.

According to author Hampton Sides, Mucci's men "adored him, in large part because anything he asked them to do and anywhere he asked them to go he was right there alongside them."

Mucci had already survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, where the West Point graduate was serving as provost marshal in Honolulu.

Some of the Sixth Ranger Battalion Mucci led on the "great raid" called him "Little MacArthur," according to Sides, "not only because he smoked a pipe incessantly but also because he had, like the supreme commander (Gen. Douglas MacArthur), a firm grasp of the theatrics of war

the salesmanship, the cajolery, the motivational tricks and public relations gimmicks that, when applied in a certain magical combination can give [a] unit both high morale and a high profile."

For his actions, Mucci received the Distinguished Service Medal from MacArthur.

After the war, 50,000 people turned out for a Bridgeport parade in the Harding High School graduate's honor, but he failed in a 1946 bid to be a U.S. congressman.

For several years, Mucci was president of Bridgeport Lincoln-Mercury Inc.

Route 25 was renamed in Mucci's honor in November 1974, but by that time he was living in Bangkok as the Far Eastern representative for the Sunningdale Oil Co. of Calgary, Canada.

The war hero retired to Melbourne, Fla., where he died at the age of 86 in April 1997, after a freak swimming accident in which he broke his hip and then suffered a heart attack.

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