This week’s pick is the Vietnam MIA rescue film Uncommon Valor (1983) directed by Ted Kotcheff (Rambo: First Blood). It stars Gene Hackman, Fred Ward, Patrick Swayze, Reb Brown, Tim Thomerson, Robert Stack and Randall “Tex” Cobb.

Uncommon Valor touches on the subject of American servicemen who had been designated POW/MIA since the end of American involvement in The Vietnam War. Gene Hackman stars as Col. Jason Rhodes, a retired Marine and Korean War veteran who believes his son has been a POW for over ten years in a Laos prison camp.

Rhodes has spent years combing Southeast Asia finding clues that lead him to believe Frank is still alive. Rhodes even enlists the help of the U.S. State Department who offer little or no help.

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This week’s pick is the classic 1982 Ted Kotcheff war/thriller First Blood a.k.a Rambo: First Blood (1982), the first installment in the legendary Rambo series. The film stars Sylvester Stallone (John Rambo), Brian Dennehy (Sheriff Will Teasle), and Richard Crenna (Col. Sam Trautman).

First Blood was based on David Morrell’s 1972 classic novel about a Vietnam veteran trying to adapt to civilian life after his horrific experiences during the war as a member of an elite special forces unit. Kotcheff’s film serves as a study into the psyche of veterans and shows the audience the harsh realities that were still facing many vets by the turn of the 1980s.

Stallone stars as John Rambo, a man haunted by his past who is back packing through the Pacific northwest of the United States in search of an old Army buddy, Delmare Berry. Rambo arrives at his friend’s home to discover that he had been dead for over a year due to cancer as a result of Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the U.S. military in Vietnam to spot the enemy from the air (this was an issue that was just now becoming known to the public). Realizing he is the last surviving member of his unit, Rambo once again hits the open road and wanders into the town of Hope, Washington.

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This week’s pick is the HBO film By Dawn’s Early Light (1990), directed by Jack Sholder. The film stars Martin Landau, Powers Boothe, Rebecca De Mornay, James Earl Jones, Darren McGavin, Rip Torn, Jeffery DeMunn, Peter MacNicol, and Nicolas Coster.

By Dawn’s Early Light was based on the novel Trinity’s Child that depicts a full nuclear exchange between the U.S. and USSR. The film is set in 1991 as the Soviet Union is undergoing radical political change (when the film was produced, the Soviet Union was in fact beginning to collapse).

A group of Soviet brass launches a nuclear strike with a stolen missile against the Soviet city of Donetsk. U.S. forces track the trajectory of the missile from allied Turkey. This act makes the Soviet Première and Soviet forces think it was a surprise attack from the U.S. and NATO forces.  The Soviets launch a retaliatory strike which threatens U.S. land based bombers and many key points of communication such as the NORAD facility, SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, Washington D.C., and Andrews AFB in Maryland which is where the president would be evacuated from.

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This week’s pick is the John McTiernan thriller The Hunt for Red October (1990). Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, and James Earl Jones star in this Cold War classic about a Soviet naval commander and a new invincible Soviet sub which threatens peace between the two super powers.

Set in early 1984 before Gorbachev came to power as the new Soviet premier, the new ballistic missile submarine Red October sets sail from port in the arctic and makes its way to the north Atlantic for a training exercise. Its captain, Marko Ramius (Connery) selects his officers and the crew for a daring mission that they believe will test the might of their old adversary, The United States navy.

The Red October is equipped with a new type of propulsion system, a caterpillar drive, which renders the sub virtually silent to sonar. This feature and its nuclear payload, represent a clear and present danger to U.S. policy in the north Atlantic at the height of Cold War tensions between both the U.S and Soviet Union.

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This week’s pick is the post Cold War thriller Crimson Tide which stars Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman as U.S. Submariners who clash over their orders to launch nuclear weapons in this Tony Scott action classic. Crimson Tide begins during a period of political unrest in post Soviet Russia when military forces crush a rebellion in neighboring Chechnya.

Violence begins to spread throughout other republics and ultra nationalists headed by a man named Radchenko criticizes American, British, and French involvement which cuts off aid to Russia as a protest of its hostilities towards its neighboring country. Radchenko’s forces seize a Russian ICBM missile complex and threaten to launch nuclear weapons if either the U.S. or its allies move in to stop him.

After several years of peace, the Cold War begins to heat up once again.

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This week’s pick is the 1983 Cold War classic War Games directed by John Badham and starring Matthew Broderick (David Lightman), Dabney Coleman (Dr. John McKittrick), John Wood (Dr. Stephen Falken), Ally Sheedy (Jennifer Mack), and Barry Corbin (General Beringer).

War Games is the ultimate Cold War thriller that questions whether or not there truly is a winner in a nuclear war. Matthew Broderick stars a David Ligthman, a highschooler with a fondness for computers and getting himself way in over his head. Lightman uses his computer hacking skills to mostly hack into his school’s computer in order to alter his grades, a dream every kid with a computer would hope to do.

At the same time, officials at the NORAD missile defense complex in Colorado, are wanting to remove the human element from America’s nuclear umbrella and devise a fully automated response system that will launch nuclear missiles once approval has been given by the president of the United States.

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This week’s pick is director John Sturges’s classic World War II thriller The Eagle Has Landed. The film stars some of Hollywood’s best talent: Michael Caine (Col. Kurt Steiner), Donald Sutherland (Liam Devlin), Donald Pleasence (Heinrich Himmler), Robert Duvall (Col. Max Radl) Jenny Agutter (Molly), Anthony Quayle (Adm. Canaris), Jean Marsh (Mrs. Grey), Treat Williams (Capt. Clark), and Larry Hagman (Col. Pitts).

The Eagle Has Landed supposes the theory that a team of German commandos clandestinely enters England and kidnaps Prime Minister Winston Churchill (the least heavily guarded world leader) and hold him for ransom in order to make the British sue for peace, thus allowing the Germans to continue on as the masters of Europe.

Amazed by the rescue mission to free Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from his mountain prison, Hitler proposes the idea to kidnap Churchill. The high command brings in architect colonel Radl (Duvall) to devise the plan in how to kidnap Churchill. Radl settles on Col. Kurt Steiner (Caine) a decorated paratrooper whose anti-Nazi reputation and crack unit are just the ones to pull off a mission considered too risky.

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Letters from Iwo Jima was Clint Eastwood’s follow up to Flags of Our Fathers as told through the Japanese defender’s perspective. Ken Watanabe stars as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who was the man responsible for defending Iwo Jima from the American invasion. Kazunari Ninomiya stars as PFC. Saigo, a conscripted baker who doesn’t want to fight, and wants to return home to his wife and new child.

The film is told through a series of flash forwards and flashbacks such as Flags, and shows the struggle many Japanese soldiers faced while preparing the island for the upcoming invasion by the American Marines portrayed in the first film.

Letters From Iwo Jima is most noted for being the most realistic portrayal of Japanese combatants in a World War II before. Eastwood uses his direction to show a picture which shows the struggles the Japanese faced in preparing themselves for certain death. Of all the characters in the film, both Saigo (Ninomiya) and Kuribayashi (Watanabe) know that this is a fight that they can’t win.

When Kuribayashi arrives on Iwo he is amazed to see how unprepared his forces are in meeting the American threat. Kuribayashi begins transforming Mt. Suribachi into an impregnable fortress that will prove fatal for the American invaders. He also has his men prepare bunker complexes, pillboxes, blockhouses, and many earth covered structures to keep the Americans from gaining a foothold inland from the water’s edge.

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This week’s pick is Clint Eastwood’s World War II masterpiece Flags of Our Fathers that depicts the famous flag raising on Mt. Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The film stars Ryan Phillippe (Navy Corpman 2^nd class John “Doc” Bradley), Jesse Bradford (Corporal Rene Gagnon), Paul Walker (Sgt. Hank Hansen), and Robert Patrick (Col. Chandler Johnson).

The film is told through a series of flash-forwards and flashbacks, through the three remaining men who were responsible for the flag raising which helped to raise America’s morale as the Pacific war raged on with no foreseeable end in sight. The seven Marines that are the focal point of the film begin their training at Camp Tarawa in Hawaii with mountain climbing and other P.T. drills.

As they set sail towards their destination, it is revealed that the target in question is the Japanese held island of Iwo Jima, which sits just seven hundred miles away from the Japanese mainland.

During a debriefing, the company commander, Captain Severance (McDonough) tells the men that they will meet stiff enemy resistance than ever before because Iwo is Japanese soil and its defenders will fight to the last man in order to prevent the Americans from gaining a closer foothold toward Japan.

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This week’s pick is Hiroshima (1995), which was a made for T.V. mini series on Showtime Network, and was directed by both Koreyoshi Kurahara and Roger Spottiswoode . The film is about the events that led up to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan during the tail end of World War II. The film is told through the eyes of both American and Japanese militarists, and civilians who were responsible, and were greatly affected by the decision to use the bombs.

The film stars Kenneth Welsh (president Harry S. Truman), Ken Jenkins (Secretary of State James F. Byrnes), Wesley Addy (Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson), Richard Masur (Maj. General Leslie Groves), Colin Fox (Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal), George R. Robertson (Admiral William D. Leahy), Saul Rubinek (Professor Leo Szilard), Cedric Smith (Gen. Curtis Lemay), Bernard Behrens (Asst. Secretary of War John J. McCloy), Jeffrey DeMunn (J. Robert Oppenheimer), Tim West (Prime Minister Winston Churchill), Naohiko Umewaka (Emperor Hirohito), Kazuo Kato (Prince Fumimaro Konoe), Ken Maeda (Minister of War Korechika Anami), and Hisashi Igawa (Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo).

Hiroshima sets the tone of the film almost immediately with the death of president Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945. His reluctant successor Harry S. Truman assumes the presidency and quickly learns of the secret government project that has devised a “gadget” which will help end the war first in Europe. Welsh, who is the spitting image of Truman, plays him to perfection. Other actors play the their historical counterparts the same.

Other notable standouts are Masur as General Groves who was the military mind behind the Manhattan Project that created both bombs at the Los Alamos, New Mexico laboratories. One of my favorite characters in the film is played by Wesley Addy who plays Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War. Stimson pleaded with Truman that the use of such a weapon could create a new arms race for atomic weapons in the near future. One scene in the film that has been debated by historians for decades is the meeting between Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard (Rubinek) and James Byrnes (Jenkins) at Byrne’s home in South Carolina.

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This week’s pick is Lewis Milestone’s classic A Walk in the Sun (1945) that tells the story of a hardened platoon that hits the beaches of Salerno, Italy in World War II. The film stars Dana Andrews (Sgt. Bill Tyne), Richard Conte (Pvt. Rivera), John Ireland (PFC. Windy Craven), George Tyne (Pvt. Jake Friedman), Lloyd Bridges (SSgt. Ward)  and Richard Benedict (Pvt. Tranella).

A Walk in the Sun was one of the first post war films that showed the audience the myriad complexities of combat and its effects on the morale of soldiers that had already been fighting under the harsh conditions of North Africa, and the Sicilian campaign. Issues like “combat fatigue” or what was called “shell shock” in the first war were not widely known, or were not considered a major issue like it is today with returning veterans.

The focal point of the film is on the fifty-three men of Lee Platoon of the Texas Division, which is made up of men from all walks of American life. Sgt Tyne (Andrews) is a native of Rhode Island, privates Friedman and Rivera (Tyne and Conte) are New York natives who can only talk about getting home to the Big Apple, and Sgt. Ward (Bridges) is a Midwest farmer who wants nothing more than to return home and resume his previous occupation before the war.

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This week’s pick is the classic Blake Edwards 1966 comedy What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? which stars legendary comedian Dick Shawn of The Producers (Captain Lionel Cash), James Coburn Cross of Iron (Lt. Christian), Aldo Ray Men in War (Sgt. Rizzo), Sergio Fantoni Von Ryan’s Express (Captain Oppo), Harry Morgan T.V.s M*A*S*H* (Maj. Pott), Giovanna Ralli (Gina Romano), Jay Novello (Mayor Romano), Leon Askin Hogan’s Heroes (Col. Kastorp) and Carroll O’ Connor Kelly’s Heroes (Gen. Bolt). The film was written by William Peter Blatty The Exorcist.

The film is set in 1943 when the Americans and Allies launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily to drive out the entrenched German army which had retreated from North Africa a few months prior as a result of Allied victory. Captain Lionel Cash (Shawn) is placed in command of Charlie Company, a band of misfits in need of R&R and are none too thrilled to be given another mission. General Bolt (O’ Connor) believes that there is some enemy resistance in the little village of Valerno.

The all too eager to prove himself Captain Cash, excepts the mission and plans to attack the village immediately. Cash introduces himself to the new company and its commander Lt. Christian (Coburn) whose insubordination and carefree attitude are the polar opposite of Cash and his “90 day wonder” mentality. Cash rounds up his company and they head off towards their objective.

When Cash and his men arrive at the sleepy village of Valerno, they find the town to be completely empty. Cash and his men find the townspeople and a garrison of Italian soldiers holding a soccer match which is interrupted when the ball lands on the bayonet of an American soldier in disbelief of such an impressive kick.

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