Even audiences predisposed to sagas of American valor or nostalgic for the good old days of unswerving wartime coalitions will find little here beyond the retro patina to grab their attention. As Miramax empties its Weinstein-era vaults, this $80 million feature, which began production in 2002, looks unlikely to execute a successful boxoffice raid.

"Inspired by true events" and based on two books -- William Breuer's "The Great Raid on Cabanatuan" and Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers" -- the film's action unfolds in the Japanese-occupied Philippines during the last five days of January 1945. Under the command of the inscrutable Col. Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt), the 6th Army Ranger Battalion sets out to free more than 500 American POWs from imminent death at the Cabanatuan camp. Calling his Rangers the best-trained, least-proven men in the U.S. armed forces, Mucci adopts a daring, detailed plan devised by the bookish young Capt. Robert Prince (James Franco).

The risky operation, which has no significance to the war effort, is all about idealism. But the underdeveloped script by first-timers Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro substitutes stoic noble types for full-blooded individuals and history lesson for drama. Franco's Prince is just one of the story's barely differentiated team players: decent, loyal and impassive.

The Americans team up with a group of Philippine resistance fighters led by Capt. Pajota (Cesar Montano), eager to prove their worth as more than mere backup. In Cabanatuan, malaria-stricken Maj. Gibson (Joseph Fiennes) tries to salvage the morale of his starving troops, whose three years of postsurrender captivity have left them feeling abandoned and doomed while all eyes were on Europe. Keeping Gibson going, besides his reckless friend Major Redding (Marton Csokas), is his chaste love for Army widow Margaret (Connie Nielsen). A statuesque, heroic beauty, she smuggles black-market meds into the camp through the underground in Manila.

"Raid" opens with almost five minutes of background exposition, but apparently the intention was not to clear the way for character-driven storytelling. Characters mouth factoids throughout the two-hour-plus film, and neither the cast nor helmer John Dahl, who has shown a deft hand with mood and character in such films as "Red Rock West" and "The Last Seduction," gives the audience much to care about. Kiwi actor Csokas (who has a leading role in Paramount Classics' "Asylum," also opening Aug. 12), comes closest to suggesting a complex human being and delivers the best line, a bit of not-so-noble throwaway humor.

The handsomely appointed production boasts outstanding work from production designer Bruno Rubeo, costumer Lizzy Gardiner and director of photography Peter Menzies Jr. The latter makes evocative use of backlit images and a desaturated palette of greens and golds in his widescreen camerawork in Queensland, Australia, and Shanghai (subbing for Manila). Even with so much riches on the screen, the raid itself arrives with the requisite explosions but little dramatic payoff. The film closes with period footage of people involved in the raid, which serves only to underscore the lack of emotional resonance in the preceding dramatization.