Too much of everything

That was an excellent one.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's an exciting warlike movie that contains over-the-top performances , continuous suspense , poignant vignettes and unsparing action . An American officer , Lt. Col. Iceal "Ham" Hambleton (Gene Hackman) is a weapons countermeasures expert with knowledge vital to the enemy, when his aircraft is shot down , he is stranded in the wilds of Vietnam . Alone ,he must rely on himself and a whole army after him. Trapped behind enemy lines , an only one man (captain Danny Glover) with whom he has radio contact can save him and to get him out . Based on true life of a lieutenant colonel stranded deep in Vietcong territory , nowadays retired and living in Arizona near a golf camp.This stirring warlike movie mixes suspense , thrills , rugged action and dialog with lots of intrigue , without losing sight of the continuation of its interesting plot or necessities of war and works on all levels . Although relies heavily on the continuous relationship by means of radio talking among them and their solid interpretations through the enjoyable friendship by oral communication. It gets the right balance between the old-style ¨Objective Burma¨, ¨Battleground¨ and the modern wartime movies as ¨Hamburger Hill¨ and ¨Casualty of war¨ . Noisy action scenes punctuate the tension without breaking it . Gene Hackman is good as a stranded officer alone after his plane is gunned down and top-notch Danny Glover as reconnaissance pilot who becomes determined to save him . Gene Hackman and Danny Glover give terrific acting in this otherwise passable film . Secondary cast is frankly good as Jerry Reed , David Marshall Frank and Clayton Rohner .Atmospheric cinematography by Mark Irwin reflecting faithfully the wilds and woods from Vietnam . Moving musical score fitting to action by Christopher Young . Compassionate thinkers , lovers warfare genre , and pacifists will all find satisfaction here .The motion picture lavishly produced by also actor Mark Damon is well directed by Peter Markle . Peter is an expert on all kind of genres as comedy as ¨Hot dog , the movie¨, ¨Wagon East¨ the last film of John Candy¨ ; Sci-Fi as ¨White dwarf¨; Sports as ¨Youngblood¨ ; ¨Drama¨ as ¨Personals¨, ¨Nightbreaker¨, and suspense as ¨Through the eyes of a killer¨ and ¨Last days of Frankie the Fly¨ , and Wartime genre as ¨Bat 21¨. Rating : 6,5 . Worthwhile seeing , better than average .

I wouldn't call this one of my favorite films, or among my favorite war films for that matter, but I did enjoy this much more than when I first saw this many years ago. Gene Hackman is the main reason I would recommend this, and Danny Glover also puts in a solid performance. If you don't know the plot by now, I'll give a short synopsis: Col. Hambleton,(Hackman) who's a passenger in a plane flying over Vietnam, parachutes to safety, and is stuck there until "Birddog" Clark(Glover)figures out how to rescue him. Jerry Reed, who's not a country bumpkin this time, plays it straight as Col. Walker, who's Clark's superior and both men try to figure out how to rescue Hambleton. It takes some time for some action to kick in, although I wouldn't call this an action film per se, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up over time. There are some disturbing moments, not that many, but it should satisfy the action fans in some of us. After some painful delays and a reference to golf(yes, golf) terminology, the man gets rescued while others trying to rescue him get killed, which left a bitter taste in my mouth, although this is a true but heartbreaking story.I had just a few gripes, the first being why was Hambleton the only man parachuting to safety, while the others perished? Perhaps it was the only seat rigged to eject, as I have no military expertise. Finally, during the ending credits, only Hambleton's story is revealed in paragraph form on the screen, which says that he currently resides near a golf course in Arizona and is retired. I thought perhaps a mention of Capt. Clark's present situation would've been appropriate.

Okay, but the real story would have made a better movie, and is, ironically more dramatic than Bat 21. Oh, and for movie makers/prop guys reading this, don't use F-5s without bombs to simulate other aircraft. Even your younger audience is becoming miltech-literates and will catch this.Good points: At least we have a movie with a FAC in it! 0-2 pilots were brave fellows, because there is no ejection seat and opening the door for a successful bailout low to the ground was not likely to work. If you can catch one at an airshow (the last O-2s retired in the 1980s from Shaw AFB) you can see and appreciate how small, light, and basic they are.

It would have been easy to turn a story like this into a cheap action flick -- heroic downed USAF Colonel fights his way through enemy territory with help of heroic self-sacrificing black pilot.It doesn't happen, exactly. The story, as I understand it, is based on fact, but I don't know how much of it is factual. Maybe the evacuation pilot, Danny Glover, really DID take off alone in a helicopter (in which he was not qualified), rescue Colonel Hambledon (Gene Hackman) single-handedly, successfully crash the helicopter he was not qualified in, and maybe the two of them then escape a horde of North Vietnamese pursuers during a "carpet bombing" of the whole area, with Glover sustaining one of those nasty but not unphotogenic shoulder wounds in the process. Maybe it IS true but it sounds a lot like rather routine fiction to me because real life is seldom so tidy. I can believe the part that golf plays in the escape plan. It's so absurd that no writer in his right mind would dream it up.Still -- that having been said -- this is a truly worthwhile movie. Action fans will find lots of exploding fireballs if that's what they're looking for. There will also be wounded smoking helicopters spinning drunkenly downward and a man being blown up in a minefield.But that's not what makes the movie important. The action is usually nothing more than a means to an end. In this case, the end is the education and humanization of Colonel Iceal Hambledon, USAF.He's your normal military men, an expert on electronic countermeasures. He is 53 years old and has spent most of his life in the military. He's never seen combat. And his being shot down constitutes his introduction to what the film shows us is a pretty ugly kind of business.Behind enemy lines he spies a column of NV troops and vehicles and calls in an air strike. Boom. Afterward the NVA shoot one of their own wounded troops, which Hambledon finds nasty. Before he knows it, stumbling through the bush, he finds an empty hootch. While scavenging it for food and water, he is discovered by its owner. Neither man understands the other's language. A physical fight follows which Hambledon can only escape from my shooting and killing the Vietnamese farmer. The farmer's napalm-scarred family show up and rush sobbing to the dead body while Hambledon backs away, stunned, saying stupidly, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." There follows a scene in which captured American fliers sacrifice themselves to save Hambledon and the Air Force then demolishes the nearby village full of soldiers and women and children. "Everywhere I go, people die," Hambledon comments sadly to himself. (I can't emphasize too strongly how much tragedy Hackman invests his lines with. They emerge as more than simply lines of dialogue. He's a fine, reliable, unflamboyant performer.) Hambledon vows that he's all done killing people -- and he is, even when he has to opportunity to shoot an armed enemy soldier who is chasing him. The Vietnames is disoriented, twirling about dizzily while a garden of slow motion flame sprouts around him. Hambledon has a bead on him but then shakes his head in disgust and looks away without firing.Danny Glover is good too. As an actor he may have more range than he's usually given credit for. Here, as in the "Lethal Weapon" movies, he's more of a supportive sidekick than anything else. He's the guy on the other end of the line who is there when you must spill your emotions to SOMEONE. Not that he's given trite lines in the part. Hambledon hesitates at one point, then tell him over the radio, "I killed a man today." "Roger that," says Glover. He understands what Hambledon's getting at -- but what is there to say? It's combat, not Oprah Winfrey. Also, anyone who wants to see Glover demonstrate that range might want to check out "Switchback," in which he is a good-natured, avuncular, laid-back serial killer.Sometimes I wonder if some of us have forgotten just how lousy an experience war is for everyone involved -- for us, for our opponents, and for the civilians drawn willy nilly into it. This film is a decent reminder.