Prisoner of War (1954)

How sad is this?

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I would suspect that some of the negative reviews of this movie stem from the fact that 1.) Ronald Reagan is the star and 2.) it would tend to fall in the very small category of anti-communist films produced by Hollywood. But for people who like good movies, this is a pretty good little film.More importantly, the film has a basis in fact. The screenwriter, Allen Rivkin, drew on true stories from those who suffered in those camps. When the Army transport "General Walker" docked in San Francisco carrying the first group of returning American POWs from North Korea, Rivkin was there and personally interviewed sixty of them. These ex-POWs told him of the harsh treatment, lack of food, freezing weather, poor medical treatment, and brainwashing sessions that were just some of the horrors they had lived through. In addition, Capt. Robert H. Wise served as the technical adviser on the film. Wise, who had spent a year as a prisoner of the Germans during World War II, spent three years in a North Korean prison camp. He nearly starved to death, dropping 90 pounds during his ordeal. His input lent invaluable veracity to the details of the film.So when you watch the scenes of torture, deprivation and mind control in "Prisoner of War," they are authentic. As for the statement that these scenes become homo-erotic "beefcake in bondage," the unfocused mind can conjure many things, but more often than not a cigar is just a cigar.A small film shot on a low budget, there is much to recommend "Prisoner of War" including its treatment of the subject post-war American defectors. A handful of Westerners opted to stay with the communists after the war (as opposed to thousands and thousands of captured Chinese and North Koreans who preferred not to go back to the Reds)and this film has an interesting twist on the subject.Might make a good B feature with "The Manchurian Candidate."

Ronald Reagan and a bunch of US soldiers in a North Korean POW camp. They are tortured... We learn North Korean Communists are bad people... We learn Americans' beards grow very slowly during days of torture...I tried to suppress it, but I finally burst out laughing at this movie. It was the scene when Mr. Reagan comes out from telling the Communists he wants to be on their side. Then, he asks for a bottle of brandy. Next, acting stone-cold sober, he takes a drunken companion, Dewey Martin, to get sulfur to cure Mr. Martin's hangover. Of course, the North Korean communist guard is as dumb as they come. So, the drunk distracts the guard while Reagan goes over to get something from a drawer, which is next to a bunch of empty boxes. I'm sure he boxes were supposed to contain something; but, of course, Reagan causes them to shake enough to reveal they are empty. Ya gotta laugh! I think "Prisoner of War" will appeal mainly to family and friends of those who worked on it - otherwise, it's wasteful. * Prisoner of War (1954) Andrew Marton ~ Ronald Reagan, Steve Forrest, Dewey Martin

I was able to hang in for only the first twenty minutes of this low-budget movie. The most glaring absurdity was that while the American inmates in a North Korean POW camp are all supposedly suffering from severe deprivation of food and medicine, going without bathing, shivering in flimsy and filthy parkas, and sleeping on bare floors, and - let's not forget enduring torture - they always manage to sport impeccably coiffed hair. With the exception of a suitably austere-looking Harry Morgan as an army Major, the casting and acting are simply awful. Ronald Regan cannot seem to stick to portraying a single character and instead creates a rather schizophrenic amalgam of past roles. A mostly Caucasian cast portraying the North Korean camp officers might have been forgivable, but when supposedly Russian officers acting as advisors to the Koreans strut around wearing re-badged Nazi uniforms complete with jodhpurs and jackboots (obvious costume-department recycles from WWII flicks) and speaking with accents like General Burkhalter from Hogan's Heroes, well, that's just six kinds of silly. Don't waste your time on this one.

Prisoner of War is one of my most favorite Ronald Reagan film. This movie also deserves the title of: "Classic" because it is just that, a classic.Reagan is on a mission to infiltrate a POW camp by being behind enemy lines and once so, shortly manages to slip into line with a column of American prisoners being force-marched to a Chinese ran pow camp. The prisoners are starved and beaten and severely mistreated all the way to the camp. The camp is actually worse than the march was and could easily be called a: "Hell Camp." This hell camp is actually under the tender loving care of the Russians.Reagan, once inside the pow camp, has to find a way to send messages to his commanding officer, on the conditions inside the pow camp. Reagan does so by joining a VERY small group of American pows who appear to turn traitor. They are of course, hated by all the other pows at that camp and soon they make radio broadcasts telling about ""how well they are being treated"" and ind doing so, that is how Reagan manages to use such a cunning code, that the Chinese and Russians never knew that he was doing so.All the while, the camp guards try to break the morale of all the American pows by starvation, torture etc. Steve Forest portrays an Americam pow who's will just cannot be broken; no matter what the Russians do to him.This movie is a bit of a flag-waver but, that is essential as part of this movie. This is another one of those great movies that is rarely shown and really deserves to be shown as much as movies like: The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen.This movie also needs to be released on DVD so that we all can enjoy viewing it.