Uncommon Valor (1983)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A rousing men-on-a-mission action-adventure with an angry political message, this covers the same ground as Rambo 2 and is almost as entertaining. The great Gene Hackman plays Colonel Rhodes, a father haunted by his son's disappearance behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. For years he tries, and fails, to convince the US government to help him find Frank. In a last-ditch attempt, he recruits several of Frank's comrades-in-arms, who each, in his own way, has unfinished business with the war, to join him on a daring rescue mission.What follows is a by-the-numbers but stirring action film, with an extremely likeable cast including Fred Ward, Tim Thomerson, and a young Patrick Swayze. James Horner provides another of his brilliant 80's action scores, by turns haunting and pulse-quickening. The set-up and training sequences are rock solid and fun, and the final rescue mission is downright exciting. I liked it better than The Dirty Dozen, which had way too much comedy for me to take it seriously. Uncommon Valor strikes a much better balance between popcorn heroics and its more sobering themes, both human and political. It's an underrated film, one I never tire of watching.

A Marine Colonel was dismissed because he wouldn't give up on his son who's MIA in Vietnam. Nearly 10 years later, he obtains evidence of where he might be. So with financial backing from the father of another P.O.W. he recruits the men who served with his son. With photos he obtained, he makes a replica of the camp, and they work out a rescue operation. When the government tries to stop them, their weapons are confiscated. So they have to find other weapons......Hilarious from beginning to end, for all the wrong reasons, Uncommon Valor beat Rambo 2 by nearly two years for being one of the most overblown pieces of propaganda bigging up the vets in the eighties.The first act and a half are pure filler, Hackman getting angry, sad, and other emotions, before recruiting his rag tag team of people with wonderful names.But the real reason to watch this is because the moment we see the most fake looking bones ever committed to celluloid,the film goes bonkers, and it's really worth seeing for the last half an hour.It might have been myself, but it appears that Hackman spouts only one line from this part of the film, Swayze gets really, I mean really, emotional when he kills someone, or sees someone die, the camera literally stays on him for the best part of ten seconds each time to show his sadness.But when Tim Thomerson survives a helicopter explosion, he loses it, runs really fast to the river, and stops.Randall 'Tex' Cobb is the comedy value here, and when he realises it, he uses his necklace to help his friends.No prizes for guessing how a character called Blaster buys it, and all the POW's look like Klaus Kinski.It's not a bad film by any means, it's just daft propaganda, telling the USA that it was okay that we didn't win, because Gene Hackman can still get out there and kick butt.

In 1972, Frank Rhodes got left behind in Vietnam and taken prisoner. His father retired Col Jason Rhodes (Gene Hackman) keeps pushing for years to get him back. He's gathered up intel and a target. Then he gathers up Frank's brothers-in-arms to go into Laos for a rescue. He has even built a replica of the camp in Texas and hired Kevin Scott (Patrick Swayze) to get them into shape. All the plans are thrown out the window when the government takes away all of the weapons.The story is bad unrealistic 80s fare. It tries to be better than the various Chuck Norris or Rambo movies. That's why they bought in Hackman. However this exists somewhere in between. It's far too unrealistic to be compelling drama. There's even a sweaty white guy with a parrot. It's also not action oriented enough to be good mindless popcorn fun. It doesn't work either way.

Ted Kotcheff's post-Vietnam film tells the story of a father. Determined his son is still alive and imprisoned in enemy territory, he endeavours to gather together a small band of ex-commandos in order to conduct a suicidal search and rescue.Gene Hackman is convincing, and the supporting cast work very well together. Kotcheff tackles his subject well, and while the movie is never incredibly moving, it is very effective."Uncommon Valour" was one of the first in what turned out to be a spate of 'Vietnam War films', some better and some worse than this one. Perhaps the inspiration for Stallone's "Rambo" came from this particular work. Worthwhile viewing.Tuesday, February 25, 1992 - Video