Return with Honor

I saw this movie this afternoon (3/21/99) at the Cleveland International Film Festival, and it was an incredible film experience. It documents the real-life experiences of a handfull of real-life POW's shot down over North Vietnam. We find out what it feels like to be a hot-shot fighter pilot. We find out what it's like being a guest in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison. We get to feel a small example of what it must have felt like to finally be released it what in some cases was over seven years of internment. Many of them were in tears. So were many movie patrons.

If you can gauge a movie by the emotions it evokes, then it wins. I was beginning to forget how absurd the entire situation was; about how most of us began believing in the war and ended up hating it. A powerful film indeed!

I was fortunate enough to see this film at its sneak preview in Dallas a few years ago. This is a truly great film. The POWs featured tell their amazing, inspiring stories. They describe in graphic detail the hardships they endured, and the tremendous measures they took to survive and persevere. It also tells the stories of their families waiting at home. These men exemplified the core values of our nation's military. By the end of the film, nearly the entire audience, which was almost exclusively comprised of grown men, was in tears. Every American should see this film. This film solidifies the debt we owe to so many.

Men face the camera and recant their prisoner of war ordeal over thirty years ago yet their voice and mannerism do not betray any animosity nor cry for retribution. Instead there is humility and a surprising resilience and sanity you would hardly expect from men isolated and tortured by North Vietnamese soldiers, some for as long as eight years. The remarkable film, "Return With Honor", chronicles in no uncertain terms about the strength of the American character and the steadfastness to pride and dignity then and now, embodied in young cadets schooled at the Air Force Academy. It is a tale of young, determined airmen who leave their families behind to fight a war they hardly understood. Their missions are already known to the Viet Cong and they become easy prey to enemy fire. Those who survive are marched around unceremoniously as war propaganda. One black airman is singled out for dishonor so as to break the morale of fellow black soldiers fighting in South Vietnam while another pilot, highly publicized in the cover of ‘Time Magazine' is made to look utterly powerless. They are put in the tombs of the ‘Hanoi Hilton' where their spirits are broken by their own torture as well as the horrific screams of the fellow pilots. Imprisoned, they learn to fight back. They develop their own communication with a 5x5 alphabetic code and their leaders, Risner, Denton, and Stockdale stand steadfast in their code of honor. Upon realization that they will not go home soon, they develop a shield epitomized by ‘tough luck' - getting use to confinement. One man builds a house in his mind and repeatedly goes over the specifications while another memorizes all the squalor and humiliation that he will later painfully sketch out on canvas. They memorize all 260 names of fellow pilots so that they can keep track of each other. They defiantly tell the world about their predicament, one blinks out in Morse Code the word ‘torture' as he is publicly displayed, another has both his middle fingers extended even as he bows in submission, while another writes to his wife about the ‘darkness at noon', his cryptic warning of his plight. Repeated attempts to escape only land them back in confinement with more torture while, ironically, they later refuse early release because to do so would be to return without honor. Finally with the Paris Peace Accords, they are released. One man asked for a steak and 19 fried eggs and others cannot sleep on mattresses with clean sheets because they have had only concrete and wooden boards. Yet these men, robbed of productive years of their lives, are not embittered. One learns that a survivor of Auschwitz is greeting them and states he should be greeting her. They moved ahead with their lives - one (Pete Petersen) comes back as the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, another (John McCain) is a U.S. Senator, another (James Stockdale) becomes a Vice-Presidential Candidate. What makes "Return With Honor" a great film is that no one had to act their roles to give us a remarkable portrait of courageous Americans - by their mere retelling, they speak volumes about their steadfast character.

This won the audience award at the 1999 Cleveland Int'l Film Festival and was brought back for the Director's Spotlight on Freida Lee Mock in 2006. Like her other works, it's a quality product taking a deep look at a time/event that resonates strongly in the American psyche.

The look back in time to the prisons that held our Viet Nam era POWs is done effectively, with voices of the POWs themselves over pictures of the "Hanoi Hilton" and other 1960's vintage Hanoi. Mock presents a powerful portrait of the prisoners, the brutality, the political wills of the times.

It's not Mock's role to say that history repeats itself, for we see the same issues in 2006 in the POW issue that we see portrayed in her film. Political pawns for both sides, expendable as individuals, tools of a national leadership's will, individuals struggling to survive; it has not changed.

This is an excellent companion piece to another of Mock's works, "Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision" chronicles this architect's part in creating the Viet Nam War Memorial.

An incredible doc interweaving interviews with P.O.W.s with amazing footage from the Vietnam war. Interviews include Arizona Senator John McCain & Ross Perot's Veep James Stackpole.

Really charasmatic storytellers and first rate production really make this movie an entirely riveting experience. How the hell did they get this footage? Very American (and patriatic film).

Would have liked to heard some of the Vietnamese's perspective but after all...it is the P.O.W.'s story. Very very engaging docu