Die verwegenen Sieben (1983)
33KDie verwegenen Sieben: Directed by Ted Kotcheff. With Gene Hackman, Robert Stack, Fred Ward, Reb Brown. Ten years after his son went M.I.A. in Vietnam, U.S. Marine retired Colonel Jason Rhodes assembles a private rescue team to find Americans held in P.O.W. camps in Laos.
“Gene Hackman is always a pleasure to watch, and he lifts this implausible POW-rescue escapade with a mature and convincing portrayal of a father strugglingto come to terms with the fact that his son was listed missing-in-action during the Vietnam War. The whole cast is quite impressive actually, consisting of old pros (Hackman and Robert Stack), future stars (Patrick Swayze, Fred Ward) and familiar bit players (Tim Thomerson, Harold Sylvester, Randall Tex Cobb, Reb Brown).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e Hackman plays a retired army officer – a veteran of the Korean War – who desperately seeks closure on the matter of his sonu0026#39;s disappearance in Vietnam. In the early u0026#39;80s, he receives photographic evidence that American POWs are still being held in the south-east Asian country of Laos. In fact, one of the prisoners on the photo looks like his son. He assembles a team of ex-Vietnam vets, trains them for a return to combat, and heads off with them to Laos on a clandestine rescue mission.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e This film seems to have been the starting point for Chuck Norrisu0026#39;s 1984 offering Missing In Action, and Sylvester Stalloneu0026#39;s 1985 hit Rambo, First Blood Part II. However, Uncommon Valor is much better than both of those overblown comic-strip follies. Although the action in this movie takes liberties with credibility, the character development is at least quite decent and the mental impact of fighting and losing friends in a war is explored. The cast give good performances (Swayze in particular, still a relative unknown here, gives the best performance of his career to this day). Ted Kotcheff directs well, conveying disparate moods – angst, humour, horror, excitement – very nicely in a variety of scenes.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e Uncommon Valor is hard to swallow in terms of believability, but it is a well-made, well-acted and entertaining jungle rescue film.”
