Based on real life, this TV movie set against the background of the Vietnam War has the makings of a strong story but fails to deliver the dramatic goods. In 1965, American naval commander Jim Stockdale (James Woods) is taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. Over the next eight years, he is kept in barbaric conditions and relentlessly tortured. Meanwhile his wife Sybil (Jane Alexander) loses patience with the inability of the naval authorities to produce satisfactory information, bands together with other wives in the same situation and launches a national campaign. The story swings back and forth between California and Jim's worsening conditions, a device which is so over-used that it becomes distracting rather than involving. Woods convinces as Jim, but Alexander for once emotes rather emptily. Haing S Ngor, so good in The Killing Fields, appears here as the commander of the POW camp.

©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes