If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The Rack casts Paul Newman in his third film as a returning prisoner of war who is put on trial for collaborating with the enemy during the Korean War. After the disaster of The Silver Chalice and his subsequent success in Somebody Up There Like Me, Newman's performance in The Rack assured his future stardom.Making things triply worse is the fact that Newman comes from a military family. His father Walter Pidgeon is in the service, his brother was killed in Korea, and the brother's wife Anne Francis has stayed with Pidgeon. It was after a welcome home party for Newman that Pidgeon receives the word about Newman's court martial. Walter Pidgeon gives the best performance in the film, his scenes with Newman after he gets the news are what great acting is all about.Prosecuting Newman is Wendell Corey and his defense counsel is Edmond O'Brien a good pair of cinematic legal adversaries if there ever was one. Also in the film is Lee Marvin who was a fellow prisoner and who is the original accusatory witness against Newman. Marvin's scene in the witness stand is also classic.The Pacific Theater of World War II and later the Korean War put us against enemies of an oriental culture and the second one flavored with Marxism. Their view of prisoners was one radically different from the western one. Someone who didn't die at his duty and allowed himself to be captured was one worthy of contempt. It's why the atrocities that happened and more important the fact that the prison keepers never viewed what they did as atrocities. These were all new issues for the American public to face. It would come even closer to home during the Vietnam War.The Rack is the story of one man who reached a breaking point while in captivity. Those points are not the same with every individual. That fact is brought out quite clearly in this fine film.

Rack, The (1956) *** (out of 4) Paul Newman, in his third film, plays Korean War vet who was a POW for three years. When he returns home he's brought up on treason charges and faces a court marshall. This film is based on a Rod Serling teleplay so the material makes for a good movie, although in the end I'm not sure what type of message it's sending out. The POW was tortured, not physically but mentally, and the film takes a look at this and what one's breaking point is. A lot of questions about loyalty to your country is brought up during the court scenes but some might be confused by what the ending tries to say or the complete turn around that seems to happen half way through the film. There's also the added plot of Newman's character not being able to connect with his hard boiled father (Walter Pidgeon) and connecting to his dead brother's girlfriend (Ann Francis). The film's screenplay has a lot of great sequences in it but it never really becomes clear on what it's trying to say. Is the film trying to claim that everyone has a breaking point? Is it trying to say that everyone should reach a breaking point but keep going for your country? The film seems to want to have its cake and eat it too as both sides are given credit yet neither takes the stage over the other. What works the best here are the performances with Newman stealing the film with his passionate character. The torture Newman displays is very striking and wonderfully done, which is rather amazing considering this was only his third film. Pidgeon has some equally impressive scenes as does Cloris Leachman. Lee Marvin, playing a tortured vet, also comes across very good in his few scenes. Wendell Corey and Edmond O'Brien are also very good. While the film's message might be someone confusing the film still works as a nice drama with plenty of good performances.

(Some Spoilers) Arriving back home from Korea highly decorated US Army Captain Ed W.Hall Jr, Paul Newman, is broken in both mind and body from the two years he spent in a brutal Communist Chinese prison camp. What Captain Hall went through in Korea in combat and in a POW prison will be nothing to what's awaiting him back in the states. It's there where he'll soon be charged with high treason in collaborating with the enemy, that may have lead to the deaths and torture of a number of his fellow GI's. For selling out his country Capt. Hill got nothing more from his communist captors then a soiled and warm blanket and hot bowl of rice soup.Highly emotional motion picture adopted from a Rod Serling TV screenplay about collaboration with the enemy during wartime that goes into the mechanics of brainwashing by the Red Chinese that was far more effective then the torture and threats, as well as carrying them out, of death on captured allied POW's by both the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War. Capt. Hall not telling anyone of what he's to be accused of has his father Col. Edward W. Hall Sr, Walter Pidgeon, get the shocking story about his boy from a friend of his Col. Dudley "Smitty" Smith, Fay Roupe, at a party thrown in Ed Jr honor after he came back from Korea.Captain Hall doesn't at all try to avoid the issue of his collaboration with the Red Chinese when he's put on trial before a military court-martial. Capt. Hill tries through his court appointed lawyer Lt. Col. Frank Wesnick, Edmond O'Brien, to explain how his mind was manipulated and destroyed by the Reds, or Chinese Commies, who played on his alienation from his strict gong-ho military father, Col. Ed Hall Sr, when he was a boy growing up in San Francisco. If the Reds tried to torture or even kill Captain Hall like they did to his friend and now bitter enemy Captain Miller, Lee Marvin, it wouldn't have worked since he, like Capt. Miller, was conditioned by the US military for that type of treatment while in enemy hands.The mind is a very delicate instrument that can be easily twisted and shaped into what a maniacal bunch of scoundrels like the Red Chinese want it to be. By playing on Capt. Hall's loneliness and feelings of being deserted by his country and unloved and unwanted by his dad coupled with the shocking news, that he got while in captivity, that both his mother passed away and younger brother Pete was killed in action in Korea that in effect got the already zombie-like Capt. Hall to play right into their hands.At his trial Capt. Hall didn't at all try to defend his actions but only tried to explain them. Even Capt. Miller, who was brutally tortured by the Reds because of Capt. Hall's collaboration with them, came to fully realize what brainwashing can do and how the person whom it's preformed on has no will or mind left to even know what he's doing.The movie "The Rack" and its star Paul Newman as the guilt-ridden and mentally tortured Capt. Ed Hall Jr is very hard to like in it making a traitor to his country look sympathetic. Yet you begin to realize at the end of the film after a heart-wrenching speech to the court, as well as movie audience, by a tearful and utterly remorseful Capt. Hall that even the strongest and bravest of us do have our weak points. That's what the Chinese Reds counted on by getting captured GI's, and there was in the war in Korea hundreds of them, like Capt.Hall to go against everything that they loved and were willing to both fight and die for. The Communist Chinese achieved all that by putting US POW's in a cold and lonely cell and then after months of brainwashing having them do their bidding like a bunch of trained seals in a aquarium.

I have to agree this is one of Pauls best movies and it never seems to come up when he is mentioned, the cast is also terriffic. I am sorry it has gone so unnoticed I can only think that it may have been set about the Korean War and that doesnt seem to get much attention.. I thought the acting was sincere and I was draw to this character that seemed to feel he lost his way by being human..