What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that this movie includes violent, dark images of war and prisoner abuses. Characters curse briefly, look ravaged, suffer abuse at the hands of captors and from malaria, and participate in prolonged, rough-looking battles.
- Families can talk about the possible reasons for this film's historical basis -- a raid in which U.S. military rescued 511 prisoners from a Japanese prison camp -- having remained largely untaught in U.S. classrooms and unheralded in popular culture. This fictionalized version adds a romance (between a soldier and a nurse) and tense relationships among U.S. soldiers, both rescuers and prisoners: what dramatic purposes do these storylines serve? How does the nurse's devotion to the major help connect action in two locations? How does the movie represent the Japanese and Filipino soldiers, in their very different relations to the U.S. troops?