In the waning days of World War II, 500 Allied prisoners-of-war sit weary, broken and tired after having to endure three-plus years of captivity. Victims of the Bataan Death March, they feel forgotten by the United States, each and every one of them certain they will never set foot upon their home soil ever again.

They are wrong. The U.S. has not forgotten then. In fact, even with the war in the Pacific now going well these men are still on the forefront of High Command’s mind. If anything, especially because things are going so well, these men are in their thoughts night and day. Because defeat nearly at-hand, the enemy is viciously murdering every single POW before they can be liberated by an American soldier and this, quite simply, cannot be allowed to continue.

And so it falls to Captain Prince (James Franco, “Spider-Man 2”) and his superior officer Lt. Colonel Mucci (Benjamin Bratt, “Miss Congeniality”) to lead a team of relatively inexperienced Army Rangers into enemy-controlled territory and attempt one of the greatest raids in military history. Facing a force maybe ten times their own, these Rangers will stop at nothing to do the one thing that might just mean more to them than anything else they do in the entire war: Bring their countrymen home.

Based on the true story, director John Dahl’s (“Red Rock West,” “Joy Ride”) “The Great Raid” has been sitting in Miramax’s vaults for over two years and it is difficult to see why. While it takes its time to get going and some of the performances are decidedly second rate, the climactic raid is a rousing edge-of-the-seat triumph of old-school filmmaking at its very best. Okay, sure much of the first two thirds is musty, and yes, splitting the picture into three distinct tangents actually works against it, but that still doesn’t mean it deserved to be tossed aside for so long like yesterday’s garbage.

But that’s exactly what happened. The only reason this is seeing the light of day is because Disney is contractually obliged to release the last of the features sitting on Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s Miramax shelves before the duo depart the company at the end of September. This is the first in a smorgasbord of features coming out over the next month and a half or so, and while some of them probably should stay locked away (“Underclassman” sure looks troubling), if the majority end up even remotely like this it’s hard to imagine what the fuss keeping them hidden was all really about in the first place.

Not that we’re talking about a misunderstood masterpiece here. Far from it. “The Great Raid” has more problems than the SAT, not the least of which is the disjointed nature of its narrative. There are three stories going on and none of them get a chance to make an impression. Following up her stunning portrait of motherly devotion in “Brothers,” Connie Nielsen (“Gladiator”) struggles as a resistance fighter pining for her G.I. love in an occupied Manila. Meanwhile, Franco never connects as mission leader Prince, coming across as a misunderstood frat boy shocked that he hasn’t stumbled into an already rockin’ kegger.

Luckily, both Joseph Fiennes (“Shakespeare in Love”) and Martin Csokas (“Asylum”) soar in the third thread, their imprisoned characters neatly boiling over in palpable amounts of pain, loyalty, friendship and love. This tangent depicting Cabanatuan Prison is a borderline stunner, and without this section I’m pretty sure the movie would fall flat on its face, brilliant final escape or no. With it, however, Dahl finds a poetical majesty, Fiennes’ simmering portrait of a man trying to do no more than protect his men, and his friend, from harm maybe his best piece of acting ever.

It should also be noted that Bratt is excellent, providing a stoically galvanizing center to the main storyline of the soldiers making the march to free the POW’s. The problem is, the actor is so smooth, so self-assured as the emotionally detached but confidently rigid Lt. Col. Mucci, I almost didn’t realize how good Bratt was until things were near three-quarters over. He disappears into the role, however, the line between the character and the former “Law and Order” regular so thin it almost takes a microscope to find it.

The rest of the movie should be so lucky. The central true story may be a good one, but Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro’s screenplay is still shockingly familiar. It all feels like it was made forty or fifty years ago by Howard Hawks or John Sturges. The only problem is, for all of Dahl’s skill as a director, he’s still no Sturges or Hawks, and much of what goes on can’t help but feel second-rate. “The Great Raid” kept feeling to me like a movie I wanted to love but could never muster up the enthusiasm to do so, much of the picture lurching along so routinely I could have filed, buffed and painted my nails before too much of interest ever occurred.

Luckily for Dahl, when the interesting stuff does occur it commands a person’s full attention. The raid on Cabanatuan is extraordinary. Exciting, tense, full of crackling suspense and filmed with old-fashioned daring, the movie comes alive with crackling electricity it does not know until this very point. If the rest of it was this confident, made with the same tenacity, it simply would not matter if things felt old-fashioned or not, a good movie a good movie no matter what technique is used to tell its tale.

Unfortunately, the best Dahl can do is put together an okay movie, one that does things well enough to get the job done but not good enough to make them worth remembering. This is a shame, because the soldiers that endured life in the Bataan camps and the Rangers who risked all to free them definitely deserve a better memorial than this. While “The Great Raid” is nowhere near bad enough to warrant Disney and Miramax’s indifference, it’s still not something I can bring myself to fully recommend. Instead, this war picture about honor, loss and sacrifice lands someplace in the middle, and, in this case, being stuck in the middle just will not do.