highly trained mercenaries + precise tactical mission + lots of explosions + Reb Brown!
no, Reb didn't exactly star in this film. In fact everyone's favorite beefy slab of machine-gun toting girlie-screaming mayhem has a pretty minor role in this one. Gene Hackman gives possibly his best performance as a disgruntled father of an MIA who leads a bunch of 'nam vets back to 'nam on an unsanctioned, privately-funded mission... by Robert "maybe you can solve a mystery" Stack no less!
This film has an outrageously fun concept, and it's also done remarkably well with half the film spent with the guys practicing their mission in an elaborate training-ground, and the second half with them pumping round after round into gook soldier. Sure the premise proved popular enough to inspire several later films like COBRA MISSION, MISSING IN ACTION, and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART 2 (Director Kotcheff directed FIRST BLOOD)... but it's just so fun in an escapist, outlandish, Swiss-Family-Robinson sort of way you just have to love it. On the plus side, Uncommon Valor also features a wealth of your favorite B-actors, like Fred Ward (Tremors 1 and 2), Randall Cobb (Golden Child), Patrick Swayze (Steel Dawn), and the aforementioned Reb Brown (Robowar, Strike Commando, Yor, etc.).
Any film with Reb Brown happily chanting "bouncin' betty blows their balls off!" can't be that bad... it's just hilarious to see him so caught up in his role that his dialog becomes unintelligable later in the film amidst all his screaming and yelling.
One of Kotcheff's better films, certainly a step up from FIRST BLOOD... would've benefitted from a better musical score (since there really isn't much of one to speak of).
