Uncommon Valor

Retired Colonel Cal Rhodes has spent more than a decade unable to accept that his son, missing in action in Vietnam, is gone. When the government offers him nothing, he takes matters into his own hands, gathering former comrades of his son and a wealthy oilman whose own child is also unaccounted for. After weeks of hard training, the group travels into Laos to find and free the men they believe are still held prisoner there.

Gene Hackman leads the cast as Rhodes, with Fred Ward, Robert Stack, Patrick Swayze, Harold Sylvester and Randall 'Tex' Cobb among the principal players. Ted Kotcheff directed the film, which followed First Blood in his filmography, and Joe Gayton wrote the screenplay; John Milius and Buzz Feitshans produced it for Paramount.

Released in December 1983, the film cost about 11 million dollars and returned roughly 31 million worldwide, a solid commercial result for an action drama of its scale. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.3 from about 13,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.2 from 231 votes. A critics' rating of 6.1 from ten reviews places professional assessments close to the audience scores, with neither group markedly more enthusiastic than the other.