Uncommon Valor 4K 1983 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

For more than 10 years now, Rhodes has been living a nightmare—he has been searching for his son, whose name was added to the list of “missing in action” in Vietnam. After making fruitless appeals to the government, Rhodes decides to uncover the mystery of his son’s disappearance on his own. After weeks of grueling training, he sets off for Laos. From that moment on, the most complex conflict of the Vietnam War begins.

Review 4K Movie

Ted Kotcheff's film “Uncommon Valor”.

A year before this film, Kotcheff had already directed a pretty cool action flick, the first ‘Rambo’ movie. “Uncommon Valor,” which continues the war theme, is of a somewhat different nature. The lone superman is replaced by a group of supermen. A group of supermen who, if they’ve learned anything in life, it’s only how to fight and kill—and they’re actually not averse to fighting and killing some more, but why? Why are these veterans, ten years after the war ended, not averse to shooting again? Not an easy question, yes.

Apparently, it’s time to talk about the reasons.

The film’s plot is straightforward. Former Colonel Cal Rhodes has been searching for his son, who went missing during the Vietnam War, for about ten years. The government isn’t very interested in finding and returning its citizens from captivity. So he’s forced to take matters into his own hands. After assembling a team of these very same former war veterans, who aren’t averse to fighting and killing, he heads to Laos, to a prisoner-of-war camp.

And then we come up against an equally serious issue: the relationship between the individual and the state. The question of a person’s responsibility for the fate of their homeland and the state’s responsibility for the fate of an individual.

Ideally, a person taken prisoner should be confident that they have not been forgotten, that the government will do everything possible to get them out of there. In reality, however, things are often quite different. The prisoner turns out to be a bargaining chip in a political game. The state reserves the right to choose.

How must it feel for a veteran to know that a friend who risked his life alongside him is rotting in a foreign prison, no longer needed by anyone, left alone with his pain?

Another difficult question, yes.

At first glance, the film seemed unpretentious—just military adventures, a bit of exoticism, a few dramatic elements. A bit of reflection on patriotism. But what kind.

Why do those whom the country has wronged the most go to war first? And why don’t politicians’ children go to war, under any circumstances?

It doesn’t bring anything to mind. Huh?

You’re lying—it does, and you get it all. You stay quiet, thinking it’s just a complicated action flick. But no, it’s simple, just like our lives in these troubled times.

And the answers to the questions we’ve faced are simpler than simple. It’s just that answering them the right way yourself—that’s not easy.