Pelotão de Guerra

Terrible acting and cliched characters, extremely improbable battle scenes and a war movie trope - Vietnam POWs left behind in-country - that has been done before and much better all combine for a war movie that honestly isn't worth your time. Think of all the great, good and even okay POW rescue movies...and this is right at the bottom of the barrel.

David Carradine as Colonel James "Everybody Goes Home" Cooper is mailing it in. I mean, look up the definition in the dictionary and you see a photo of DC in this movie. He's so wooden you could chop him up for firewood and have one that burns all night. When he is acting, it's Cliche Central, or those long constipated stares that are meant to be threatening - I assume - to his Vietnamese enemies. His gun never runs out of bullets and no matter how many bad guys there are out there, he's impervious to them all. And don't even get me started on the America flag scene during the finale.

I never thought I'd see the day when a film came out that makes Chuck's "Braddock" series look like Oscar winners, but here we are.

Watch "Missing in Action" instead. Much better.

Silly cash-grab by Cannon Films to milk their success with Chuck Norris' Vietnam action flick MISSING IN ACTION. Set in the waning days of the Vietnam War, David Carradine plays a Colonel tasked with rescuing a group of P. O. W.s being held at a secret camp. The rescue does not go as planned, and the team finds themselves prisoners, now needing to escape. The great Mako plays the evil commanding officer of the P. O. W. Camp, who goes head-to-head with Carradine. It's all very dumb and is hardly Colonel Nicholson and Saito from THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, but it's breezy and has pretty much non-stop action and explosions once it gets going. P. O. W. THE ESCAPE is not a serious film and nothing to go out of your way to see unless you're a fan of cheesy Cannon Films of this ilk (i.e. AMERICAN NINJA, THE DELTA FORCE, PLATOON LEDER, etc.).

David Carradine makes you believe a laid back lethargic soldier can become a one man killing machine in the jungles of the 'Nam. This film is lots of fun, anybody expecting military and historical accuracy will suffer the same kind of disappointment as someone expecting to see David Carradine perform with all the speed and agility of Bruce Lee.

Carradine and his fellow P.O.W.s suffer at the hands of a VC officer who secretly harbors a desire for the American dream, he demands that Carradine aid him in achieving it. Instead the Tai Chi expert and the dependable Steve James (you could pair James up with Hugh Grant and still be guaranteed victory) serve up a healthy dose of mayhem and sends Charlie running most ricki tik. If you've run out of Chuck Norris war films to watch, P.O.W. the Escape will fill the void.

David Carridine may be a Tai-Chi expert but as Bruce Lee was quick as the Flash, Carridine is slow as a snail. Here he is making a similar type of film to the Chuck Norris, as Colonel Braddock, Vietnam POW rescue films of the same 1980's decade.

There is nothing new to be found in this film as everything in/about it has been seen/done before. Having said that it is still an enjoyable sit down to watch no brains needed release. Carridine is his usual lethargic self and the camp commandant, played by the well known Mako, is the sadistic guy who does not actually like communism so, he want;s to make a deal with Carradine to get to America with all his stolen American prisoners belonging etc.

Like I have said, its not Oscar quality but its good enough to pass your time away.

(1986) P. O. W. The Escape WAR/ ACTION

Co-written and directed by Gideon Amir directing the David Carradine less than equivalent of version of "Missing in Action" as he plays Colonel James Cooper patriotic duty to save the POW's left behind in Vietnam prison camps resulting him to be captured himself. As the colonel finds out that the Vietcong camp commander, Captain Vinh (Mako) is secretly planning to build himself a new life in America using the gold that he has stole.

The action is not that good, as well as the credibility which all it is is Carradine taking advantage of a genre that has already been tired out.