Uncommon Valor (1983)

I guess I had high hopes for a film starring Gene Hackman (Mississippi Burning and The Royal Tenenbaums). And to be fair, he isn't that bad.

The bad involves a story laden with poor acting (thanks to a young Patrick Swayze mostly) and an A-Team script (believe me! it even has a Mr. T type character) and a plot that is extremely linear leaving little room for character development beyond "I'm part of a team again" for Vietnam vets. What I do find quite humourous was the use of one of the characters played by Randall 'Tex' Cobb in the Coen bros. film Raising Arizona - he carries a hand grenade on his body and dies from a grenade blast in both films.

It's really too bad. I choked up in the first five minutes as Hackman is shown watching American POW soldiers on TV return from Vietnam years after the war while his son is still missing in action (MIA). The story steadily loses momentum following this as this grieving father puts together an elite team of his son's friends (ranging from a hospital administrator to a BMX pro) who were in Vietnam to go back and find a couple MIAs in Laos.

The makers of the film are trying too hard. They want us to feel sorry for the vets so they share some trauma. They want us to believe it's possible for civilians to go and attack a POW camp and rescue prisoners so they assemble ridiculous facts like having helicopters available to steal just kms away from the camp in Laos and a millionaire father of an MIA to finance the mission. It's too Magnum P.I.ish (it even has a black helicopter pilot!).

Oh, and the Asians in the film are about as developed as a 2 month old fetus.

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