The Hanoi Hilton angered a lot of reviewers upon its 1987 release. The New Republic launched its exceptionally vicious review of the film by calling it "filth." Other reviewers howled in protest by calling the film "one-sided," "virulent," and so forth.Such reviews only confirm James Bowman's point about the idiotic film Kids, namely that the movie reviewing community consists of the most gullible people in the world, people who would never think to challenge the assumptions they want to see confirmed in the movies they review.
It confirms this point because what the denunciations of The Hanoi Hilton really reflect is the film's commitment to truth.
The film is about Hoa Lo prison, one of the most brutal POW prisons in history. North Vietnam not only tortured and killed prisoners, it used them as propaganda tools, and enlisted the aid of Westerners to spread disinformation about Hanoi and its war aims.
The film captures such disinformation actions in two crucial scenes; early on, an Australian TV journalist (based on the real life journalist Wilfred Burchette, who aided Communist forces all over the world and participated in the torture of American pilots in both Korea and Vietnam) openly in league with the Communists does a piece on a prisoner who steadfastly refuses to go along with the colossal fraud being permeated about Communist benevolence. The Aussie gripes at the prison commandant (Aki Akeong) about the POW's uncooperative attitude.
Later, an American film actress and her husband (based on Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden) greet the POWs and ask them to sign an apology "to the women and children you bombed." Of course they did no such thing, and tell her off on it.
Nonetheless she wins the release of a few prisoners, much to the contempt of almost all of them. This is one of the film's major themes; one goes, we all go, as is repeatedly told by the POWs to the prison commandant.
Eventually the POWs are released upon the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, and celebrate having outlasted the enemy as they take off for freedom.
The film's superb cast, tremendous attention to detail (the sets were built through extensive consultatition with men who were imprisoned in Hoa Lo), and Lionel Chetwynd's flawless direction make for a chilling story.
