Trailer
Plot summary
Retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes has spent ten years searching Southeast Asia for his son Frank, an Army lieutenant reported missing in 1972. Convinced that Frank is a prisoner in Laos, Rhodes asks the United States government for help and is turned down. He then gathers Vietnam veterans, among them Blaster, a demolitions expert, Wilkes, a tunnel rat who lives with PTSD, and Sailor, a machine gunner, all of whom served in Frank's reconnaissance unit. Rich oilman MacGregor, whose son disappeared from that same unit, funds the mission, and the men train near Galveston, Texas. In Southeast Asia the CIA takes their weapons, so they buy replacements on the black market from a dealer Jiang knows. Jiang, a deposed drug baron, joins them with his daughters Lai Fun and Mai Lin.
Cast
- Kelly Junkermanas MacGregor (as Kelly Yunkerman)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Uncommon Valor (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The screenplay came from the actor Wings Hauser, who was set off by a childhood friend back from Vietnam. "I saw that he had left something behind in Viet Nam and that triggered the whole thing," Hauser said of the film's origin.
- Once John Milius came aboard as producer, the script Wings Hauser had written was rewritten by Joe Gayton. Hauser then lost the screenplay credit in arbitration and was left with sole "Story by" credit on the finished film.
- While the picture was in preparation, news broke that James Gritz, a former Green Beret lieutenant colonel and the model for Rambo, had led a secret mission into Laos to look for missing Americans and been ambushed. Director Ted Kotcheff said they avoided any echo of it, and that research found some 30 groups training for such missions.
- Producer John Milius did not want Gene Hackman as the retired Marine colonel who leads the rescue: he said he wanted the veteran Western star James Arness in the lead role instead.
- The Laotian prison camp of the climax was built on a private ranch in the Lumahai Valley on Kauai, Hawaii, and the Vietnam opening was shot nearby in a rice paddy two miles from central Hanalei, barely 200 yards from the Kuhio Highway.
- The Department of Defense refused to rent the production its Bell UH-1N Iroquois and Bell 206B Jet Ranger helicopters, judging the film anti-government, so the filmmakers bought the helicopters outright and repainted them.
- Producer John Milius went ahead and hired a composer for the film without getting Paramount's consent, and the studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg simply overruled him on the choice.
