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24 Years Later, Bruce Willis’ Criminally Underrated WWII Masterpiece Is Streaming for Free

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War dramas will always be popular, with the intensity and truth behind their stories a perfect way to captivate a global audience. Right now, one of the best war films of the year is proving popular on PVOD. The WWII drama-thriller Pressure, which stars Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott, follows the 72 hours before D-Day, and somehow finds a fresh lens through which to look at one of the most-told war stories in modern media.

The success of Pressure will likely point people in the direction of other war epics, with one such gem about to make its way to a free streamer. Set in 1944 after the Battle of the Bulge, Hart’s War follows Bruce Willis as a senior-ranking Allied officer, Colonel William McNamara, alongside Lieutenant Thomas Hart (Colin Farrell), who is tortured at a German prisoner of war camp and gives up information valuable to the Allied strategy. McNamara then recruits Hart to defend Lieutenant Lincoln Scott (Terrence Howard), a black prisoner of war accused of murdering a white prisoner.

Hart’s War was first released in 2002 and is based on the novel by John Katzenbach. The film is directed by Gregory Hoblit, who is best known for directing 1996’s Primal Fear, and was one of the last movies he made to date. Hart’s War was sadly met with mixed reviews from critics, scoring just 60% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but it did earn a strong 3/4-star review from the great Roger Ebert. If you’re looking for your next gripping war drama, you’re in luck, as Hart’s War will be available to stream for free on Plex, starting July 1.

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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

🏺Indiana Jones

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🔧John McClane

🎭Ethan Hunt

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01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





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02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





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03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





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04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





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05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





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06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





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07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





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08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





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09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





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10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





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Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Rambo

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond

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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

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John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

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Ethan Hunt

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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Did ‘Hart’s War’ Perform Well at the Box Office?

Colin Farrell as Lieutenant Thomas Hart and Bruce Willis as Colonel William McNamara on a cropped poster for ‘Hart’s War’
Image via MGM
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Hart’s War didn’t manage to impress critics on the whole, but could it at least find some success at the box office? Sadly, the film was one of the biggest flops of 2002, scoring just $33 million in global revenue against a budget of $70 million. This is an undeniable disaster for a film led by Willis during the height of his Hollywood power, just three years after he starred in M. Night Shyamalan‘s The Sixth Sense. Hart’s War faced tough box office competition upon debut, including Black Hawk Down, A Beautiful Mind, and Peter Pan: Return to Neverland.

Hart’s War is streaming for free on Plex next month. Stay tuned to Collider for the latest streaming stories.


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Release Date

February 15, 2002

Runtime

125 minutes

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Director

Gregory Hoblit

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Producers

Arnold Rifkin, David Foster, David Ladd

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  • Colin Farrell

    Lt. Thomas W. Hart

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