War drama, based on a true story, starring Gene Hackman and Danny Glover. Military tactician Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton gets a rude awakening to the realities of war when his plane is shot down over North Vietnam. Surrounded by the enemy, his only hope for survival is a spotter pilot, code-named "Birddog".
Set during the Vietnam War, this film stars Gene Hackman as Lieutenant Colonel Hambleton (codenamed BAT-21), a military strategist who crashes behind enemy lines and is brought face-to-face with the human misery of the conflict. Hackman makes Hambleton's career soldier a strongly believable character, while Danny Glover is as excellent as ever as the pilot trying to track him down. However, the episodic nature of the sombre tale never allows the necessary sense of urgency to surface, while director Peter Markle backs off from any real commitment to the situation's dramatic irony.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Lt Col Iceal Hambleton | Gene Hackman |
| Captain Bartholomew Clark | Danny Glover |
| Colonel George Walker | Jerry Reed |
| Ross Carver | David Marshall Grant |
| Sergeant Harley Rumbaugh | Clayton Rohner |
| Major Jake Scott | Erich Anderson |
| Colonel Douglass | Joe Dorsey |
| Vietnamese man | Reverend Michael Ng |
| Boy on bridge | Theodore Woei-Shyong Chan |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Peter Markle |
