John Dahl’s “The Great Raid” is a suspenseful, sepia-toned account of the U.S. Army’s audacious scheme to liberate 500 POWs from a brutal Japanese prison camp in the Philippines during World War II. And while the movie has plenty of engaging and harrowing moments, there’s something vaguely dysfunctional about it as a piece of cinema — it’s too straight, too self-assured, too tactical.

Which is to say, it lacks art. When Lt. Col. Henry Mucci (Benjamin Bratt) announces to his 6th Ranger Battalion that it will plunge 30 miles behind enemy lines (on foot, no less!) to storm the notorious Cabanatuan POW camp, the implied and imminent threat of annihilation is enough to carry the scene. Instead, Dahl — who led film noir’s brief ’90s renaissance with such low-budget gems as “Red Rock West” (1992) and “The Last Seduction” (1994) — hedges his bets with a swelling, generically inspirational score that Yes guitarist-turned-movie-composer Trevor Rabin (“Bad Boys 2”) could have swiped from any number of grade-B war movies. It only serves to rip us out of the moment.

Back at the prison camp, morale is plummeting. The ranking American officer, Major Gibson (Joseph Fiennes from “Shakespeare in Love”) is infirm with malaria and suspects the Japanese will simply kill his men rather than let them fall into the hands of the rapidly advancing Allies.

Moreover, his willful second-in-command (Marton Csokas) is contemplating a foolhardy escape that will inevitably bring down the wrath of the Japanese warden. Csokas, so good flipping up Natasha Richardson’s skirt in “Asylum,” is heroically cast here, with a lived-in, ’40s-style face that recalls Steve McQueen or a young William Holden.

Inspired by two books about the Cabanatuan raid — “The Great Raid on Cabanatuan” by William B. Breuer and “Ghost Soldiers” by Hampton Sides — the movie finds itself intermittently bogged down in a proxy romance involving Gibson and a freedom-fighting American nurse (Connie Nielsen from “Gladiator”) that feels episodic and blatantly subplotted. If anything, it only siphons off some of the nerve-tingling tension that builds up in anticipation of the climactic battle scene, which ferociously explodes off the screen in the best tradition of “The Dirty Dozen.”

Cabanatuan’s final liberation is made all the more satisfying and profound by the horrific, gut-twisting images of Japanese cruelty that precede it. Without justifying the disgusting frat-house business at Abu Ghraib, it is, perhaps, useful to be reminded of what real prisoner abuse looks like.

‘The Great Raid'
Starring: Benjamin Bratt, Joseph Fiennes, James Franco, Connie Nielsen
Rating: R (strong war violence and brief profanity) Running time: 132 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday in Valley theaters
Grade: B-