William D
This was a good movie to pass the time.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
12/07/23
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Ann S
If you're watching this for the first time in the 2020s, well, it may not hold up, but I saw the movie when it was released and again recently and I loved it both times.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/07/23
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Chris S
To start with, any Gene Hackman movie automatically starts with three stars. The man could read the phone book and it would be more compelling and better acted than 90% of the crap out there. Second, this is Hackman playing Col. Rhodes, out to rescue his son, a POW from the Vietnam War, stuck in Laos for the last ten years while the American government pays lip service about bringing the boys back home. Within the first 5 minutes of the movie the utter grief that affects Hackman is gut wrenching, with one scene, flashing back to his son coming to his room when he was still a scared child, being a particular gut punch. Hackman's despair turns to desperation as he is kicked out of the military while running through Southeast Asia trying to find proof his son is still alive. When he finally catches the small glimmer of hope he needs to go forward with his rescue plan, he still has to find a team of men willing to put it all on the line to help him out. Hackman, as Rhodes, doesn't sweet talk these men into signing up for the mission, he is a Colonel damnit and he is going to push through for the sake of his son. The team, including Fred Ward and Patrick Swayze, train while fighting some of their own demons, until it is time to head to Bangkok for the staging of the mission. Things go poorly, the team fights through the adversity. The end is not the cookie cutter, everyone wins and goes home happy result that became the standard soon after this movie came out. It's a fantastic movie though about loss, grief and determination and Hackman doesn't have a bad scene in the entire film. The man who played Popeye Doyle, Lex Luthor and Norman Dale to perfection does nothing damaging to his reputation as Colonel Jason Rhodes in Uncommon Valor.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/13/23
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Steve D
Too predictable to really work.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/09/23
Full Review
jelisije j
A decent war film about one man gets a group of soldiers to return to the battlefield to rescue POW'S.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
In the early 1980s, retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes (Gene Hackman) is obsessed with finding his son Frank, an Army Lieutenant listed as "missing in action" (MIA) since 1972. After 10 years of searching Southeast Asia and turning up several leads, Rhodes believes that Frank is still alive and being kept in Laos as a prisoner of war. After petitioning the United States government for help, but receiving none, Colonel Rhodes brings together a disparate group of Vietnam War veterans, including some who were a part of Frank's platoon: Wilkes (Fred Ward), a "tunnel rat" who suffers from PTSD; "Blaster" (Reb Brown), a demolitions expert; and "Sailor" (Randall "Tex" Cobb), a crazed, yet loyal machine gunner. Called Sailor for his tendency to get high and just "sail away", he had a hand grenade tied around his neck with the idea that if life ever got too difficult he'd pull the pin and see what's on the other side. Additionally, two helicopter pilot acquaintances of Rhodes, Distinguished Flying Cross recipient Johnson and Charts, join the group. Former Force Recon Marine Kevin Scott (Patrick Swayze) joins the team and later turns out to be the son of a pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and listed as MIA. With the financial backing of good friend and rich oil businessman McGregor (Robert Stack), whose son served in Frank's platoon and is also listed among the missing, the men train near Galveston, Texas in preparation to undertake a rescue mission at a remote POW camp in Laos. As the team arrives in Southeast Asia, the CIA, fearing an international crisis from Rhodes' actions, intercepts him in Bangkok and confiscates his weapons and equipment. Still determined to rescue their comrades, the team members put together their expense money given to them by McGregor to purchase replacement weapons and supplies. Rhodes contacts an acquaintance, deposed local drug baron Jiang, who joins the expedition with his two daughters Lai Fun and Mai Lin. Jiang manages to supply them with outdated but capable World War II-era weapons. In the course of the expedition, Charts gradually forms a relationship with Lai Fun. Near the Laotian border, the group is attacked by a border patrol unit and Mai Lin is killed. Later, the group divides: Rhodes leads Charts, Sailor, Johnson and Lai Fun as the "air team" to a helicopter compound to secure escape transportation, while Jiang, Blaster, Scott and Wilkes scout out the prison camp as the "ground team." The ground team later discovers four Americans among the prisoners, but are unable to ascertain Frank's whereabouts...
Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert of This Week at the Movies: The Movie Review Program both gave the film a thumbs down. In his Chicago Sun-Times review of Uncommon Valor, Ebert gave the film a mixed 2-out-of-4 star review that described the squandering of "first-rate talent" like Kotcheff and Hackman in a film that was little more than "two hours of clichés" delivered with "lead-footed predictability".
"Uncommon Valor" is a true cliched 80s production with a strange mix of routine silly gung ho action and a dramatic emotional storyline based on those POWs that went missing off the chart during the Vietnam war. The general plot is however formulaic trying to be something like the great "The Dirty Dozen", but fails in that attempt for sure. The film was a box-office hit nevertheless, one of the top-earning films of 1983. This was considered a surprise at the time because of the film's lack of stars and the fact it had to compete with Scarface and Sudden Impact. Gordon Weaver, Paramount's president of marketing, thought the film "was successful because of the emotional impact of the ending. The emotional ending really makes you feel terrific." Ok ensemble but it´s really only Gene Hackman who comes out of this in a solid manner. "Uncommon Valor" hasn´t aged all that well and I can only write it off as a silly 80s actionfilm (and hardly amongst the better films about the Vietnam war), but I acknowledge that there´s some emotional and historical value.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
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