February 27, 2022

Overall, Uncommon Valor (UV) is a less-flashy atypical Hollywood movie of ex-soldiers being reunited to form a team to rescue Vietnam POWs, using good (but not Oscar quality) humor, and decent near-realistic (but not memorable) special effects to tell a 2-part story of forming a rescue team which then performs their mission.

Decades after UV was produced, one could say that it's just another run-of-the-mill movie about rescuing Vietnam POWs; h… read the rest.

Overall, Uncommon Valor (UV) is a less-flashy atypical Hollywood movie of ex-soldiers being reunited to form a team to rescue Vietnam POWs, using good (but not Oscar quality) humor, and decent near-realistic (but not memorable) special effects to tell a 2-part story of forming a rescue team which then performs their mission.

Decades after UV was produced, one could say that it's just another run-of-the-mill movie about rescuing Vietnam POWs; however, this was one of the earlier movies of this genre so I don't think it can be fairly compared with the rest of this ilk. (E.g. Missing In Action was 1985 and the 2nd Rambo movie was 1986.) UV isn't a typical Hollywood attempt at making a blockbuster, yet it did very well in the theater. UV is noteworthy for being more emotional than its brethren; it's not a tear-jerker, nor is it a masterpiece drama since it is a bit light-hearted in many places and uses humor liberally. (The humor isn't comedy per se, I felt that its purpose is to reminder us that the characters are misfits and has-beens, ex-soldiers but not ex-warriors, and they're transitioning from plain vanilla real lives to what's normally reserved for elite teams of soldiers like Delta Force.

UV has a charm about it that most others lack. The acting isn't superb, but it's still very good. It doesn't have tons of eye-candy special effects, but it does use them fairly appropriately to enhance the story; I'd even go so far to say that, unlike typical Hollywood movies of today, instead of dialogue and story gluing together a bunch of CGI action scenes, UV takes the opposite approach of using action scenes and humor to glue together the story parts and demonstrate that the characters are a bunch of misfits, aging former soldiers brought together for a rescue mission. Patrick Swayze's character is unique here, really gung ho, kind of a counterpoint to the aging ex-soldiers.

The 1st half of UV tells a story of ex-soldiers coming together, overcoming their unique prejudices, and re-learning how to work together as a team. Eventually, they form a fairly effective team and the rescue mission is a Go. The action scenes weren't very realistic, but they were still OK, certainly good at demonstrating how the character steadily became a team.

The 2nd half of UV is the rescue mission itself, not really anything spectacular and more typical of a Hollywood film. It's not bad at all, just fairly routine, but done well, nonetheless. The action scenes, in particular, are decent but not eye-popping or noteworthy of realism, yet they're sufficient for the story. (Of course, there are scenes which are a bit over-the-top, maybe worth a half-star ding in the overall rating.)

PS This review is based on my having seen UV in the theater when released, augmented by my just having watched it again over 30 years later.

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