It's been so long since I've seen this movie (at least 15 years) and yet it still haunts me with a vivid image of the horrific consequences that prisoners of war can face despite the terms of the Geneva Convention.
A unit of Australian underwater demolitions experts are captured in an archipelago near Japan following a successful mission to set mines in a Japanese harbor.
Once in prison these men expect the same treatment as any other POWs but to their dismay soon learn from a friendly Japanese prison guard that they are being tried as spies since they were out of uniform when captured. The consequences of such an infraction, by Japanese martial code, is execution by beheading.
Despite their pleas, and the pleas of the sympathetic prison guard, the day of reckoning approaches like a ticking time bomb. The tension is so high you will actually hear the ticking, though it may just be your chest pounding with the percussion of a marching execution squad.
The ending is actually too painful to reenact in my head much less write it here. But I can promise you-- you'll never forget it. Good luck finding the video in the U.S.
