Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

g-bodyl Being such a movie geek, I have generally heard of nearly every film out there. But somehow, this film sneaked under my radar and when I finally came across it, I was astounded to realize I have never heard of it before, especially with Gene Hackman in the lead. While not the greatest film on the subject, Uncommon Valor is a marginally effective war film and is a story on friendship, courage, and what it takes to see the ones they love again.Ted Kotcheff, who you many recognize as the director of First Blood, directs a film about a retired colonel who spent ten years trying to find his son, who is listed as missing in action. After all his efforts fail, he organizes a team that includes former colleagues of his son and they begin a courageous effort to bring back American heroes from Vietnam.The acting is pretty good, actually. Gene Hackman is always good so it was no surprise here to see him give a committed performance. The other guys, you may not be so familiar with. My favorite character was played by Randall "Tex" Cobb and his character was so dumb and silly, but always made an effort to get the job done.Overall, Uncommon Valor is a decent war movie led on by the values of family and friendship. It's not the greatest war film because of it's uneven pace, spotty directing, and loose plot points. But with all these values and how the actors are able to bring these values across, this turns out to be an irresistible war film. I rate this film 8/10.

SnoopyStyle 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.

Robert J. Maxwell Gene Hackman is a former Marine Corps colonel who musters a handful of private Vietnam vets to go back to Laos and rescue some Americans who have been listed as missing in action. Hackman suspects that, in actuality, the half-dozen or so MIAs are secretly being held in a remote camp by Laotians to be tormented and to provide more hard labor. Hackman is being paid by the wealthy Robert Stack, whose son, like Hackman's son, is thought to be among the MIAs. But the circumstances are such that Hackman can only manage to buy old and out-dated weapons, though he manages to pick up the help of a fervid anti-communist Loatian and his two daughters along the way.I don't think the movie was deliberately concocted to endorse the myth of the Vietnames still holding our MIAs for propaganda purposes. The myth was real enough. If anyone remembers, there were many bumper stickers in 1982 and 1983, BRING BACK THE MIAs. I think, instead, that the film was made partly in order to cash in on the myth. It was absurd on the face of it. Why would our former enemy refuse to return MIAs? Propaganda? Where is the propaganda value in something that's kept secret? To add the labor supply? They need a hundred extra laborers in Vietnam and Laos? The motives behind this movie -- with its triumphant music and high body count -- were scurrilous.But how about the movie itself? Stripped of its theme of rescuing mythical mistreated MIAs, it's a routine paramilitary actioner, no better and no worse than dozens of others that appeared in the 1980s. Gene Hackman's performance is the only one that manages to keep its head above water. He's just about always reliable.Of the others, this being a formulaic plot, derived from "The Dirty Dozen" among others, I kept trying to guess which of the gang would sacrifice themselves for the mission. Of the three anti-communist Asians, I figured one or more were dead meat. That's why Asian helpers appear in movies like this. (I was right two times out of three.) I also figured Patrick Swayzie as the rookie ex-officer, the youngest of the group, who'd never "earned the respect" of the others because he'd never seen combat, would also have to go in some heroic mode. Wrong. He becomes a hero, true, but survives intact. I thought there was a fifty-fifty chance that Hackman would have to go too, but he makes it out okay. The formula doesn't really stretch for originality either. Charles Bronson's claustrophobic POW escapee from "The Great Escape" is here in Fred Ward's ex tunnel rat, a claustrophobe who is forced to crawl through a drainage pipe with a snake inside it, so that he can do a recon on the Laotian POW camp.The title, "Uncommon Valor," is from a tribute that Admiral Nimitz made to the men on Iwo Jima -- "Uncommon valor was common that day." Nimitz was certainly right about that. Whether or not the men who fought in Vietnam were all equally valorous is remote from the point. Anyone who saw combat or even came near it, putting their lives on the line for the guys in the line next to them, were heroic enough. This movie, and the way it exploits our bitterness about the Vietnam war, doesn't really do them justice.

DragStrip First of all it has to be conceded that this film has a very "macho" 80s/Reagan era view of war. Most Vietnamese characters are cannon fodder whose deaths have little or no impact, while American characters are granted either tragic or glorious deaths. But if you can tolerate, ignore or (to be fair) enjoy this aspect of the film, you will find a very moving look at people dealing with the idea of their friends and family never coming home and/or being forced to live as Prisoners of War. This is the main thing which separates this from other POW rescue fantasies (along with a certain, though modest, degree of realism). The most touching scene is at the start of the film, with Hackman pondering over the whereabouts of his son, but there are also some very poignant moments at the end of the film. "Uncommon Valor" is also worth watching for a memorable cast including one of Patrick Swayze's earliest and best performances. Hackman is, as usual, excellent.