{"id":7023,"date":"2024-10-25T11:55:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7023"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:55:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:55:48","slug":"p-o-w-the-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/p-o-w-the-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"P.O.W. the Escape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"P.O.W. the Escape<\/strong> (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gideon Amir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Malcolm Barbour, James Bruner, Avi Kleinberger, John Langley and Jeremy Lipp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Storrs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Yehiel Ne\u2019eman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 4, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: David Carradine, Charles R. Floyd, Steve James, Phil Brock, Mako, Daniel Demorest, Tony Pierce, Steve Freedman, James Acheson, Rudy Daniels, Ken Metcalfe, Kenneth Weaver, Michael James, Irma Alegre.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $2.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here\u2019s a real blast from the past! I haven\u2019t seen the Cannon actioner P.O.W. the Escape<\/strong> since the 80s. It was made in the wake of the success of the P.O.W rescue flicks Rambo: First Blood Part II and Missing in Action. Playing the Sylvester Stallone\/Chuck Norris role is David Carradine, the laconic star of Death Race 2000, Circle of Iron, Q and Lone Wolf McQuade (opposite Norris). Like his tough guy predecessors, he racks up quite a body count in his flight to freedom.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Col. James Cooper (Carradine), whose motto is \u201ceverybody goes home\u201d, is assigned to lead a special mission to liberate American prisoners of war from a North Vietnamese prison camp in the end days of the war. When he and his squad arrive at the site, there aren\u2019t any POWs, just enemy soldiers waiting to ambush them. After a fierce battle, Cooper is captured and taken to a camp run by Captain Vinh (Mako, Conan the Barbarian) where he\u2019s faced with a difficult choice. He either helps Vinh escape to the US or be taken to Hanoi to answer for his \u201cwar crimes\u201d. He reluctantly agrees to the former on the condition that all the other POWs are freed as well. En route to the American sector, Cooper and the POWs escape with the intention of making it to a rendezvous point where choppers will be waiting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t see P.O.W. the Escape<\/strong> at the movies. It didn\u2019t open in Philadelphia. If it did, I would have been there opening weekend- most likely, with my father, a fellow action fan. I rented it from West Coast Video circa December of that year. I liked it well enough. I saw it again on cable in spring \u201987. That is the last time I recall watching it. I figured it was time to check it out again. It\u2019s still pretty good for what it is. It\u2019s damn good for a Cannon movie, that\u2019s for sure!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The late, great Steve James, Michael Dudikoff\u2019s sidekick in the American Ninja movies, plays a bad ass POW named Johnston. He\u2019s the guy who\u2019s with Cooper all the way. So is Adams (Brock, The Allnighter), a bespectacled smart guy whose main goal when he gets stateside is meeting a girl with \u201cmammary glands the size of Buicks\u201d. Sparks (Floyd in his only role), on the other hand, hates Cooper from the start. He\u2019s only looking out for number one, himself. He proves this time and time again, especially as it pertains to a chest of stolen gold in Vinh\u2019s possession. These are the only other characters with which you need concern yourself.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Gideon Amir (producer of Missing in Action and American Ninja), P.O.W. the Escape<\/strong> has some decent action scenes. HOWEVER, I have call out the first sequence on something that makes absolutely no sense. When Cooper and the other soldiers show up at the camp, they go in gung ho-style with guns blazing away. It goes on for a few minutes until somebody realizes the camp is empty. Shouldn\u2019t they have done some recon first, look for signs of life? If they had, they\u2019d know there were no POWS on site and they could potentially be walking into a trap. I\u2019ve never been in the military, so maybe I don\u2019t understand how such things work. I\u2019m simply going by common sense. Then again, common sense doesn\u2019t always factor into action movies, does it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve always liked Carradine. He has a quiet kind of cool about him that he always brings to his characters. Cooper would much prefer to go in quietly and extricate the POWs. The brass wants something entirely different. They want a show of force on their part so Cooper is ordered to mount a full-scale invasion with helicopters, machine guns and explosions. Through it all, Cooper keeps his cool, even when he\u2019s gunning down enemy soldiers by the dozen. James was always a great co-star. When you saw his name in the opening credits, you knew to expect total bad assery. Mako makes a good villain. He\u2019s a sadistic creep with dreams of joining his family in Miami before he\u2019s made to answer for his own criminal actions. Don\u2019t worry, with somebody like David Carradine on his back, it\u2019s certain he\u2019ll be made to answer anyway…. with his life<\/em>!<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s nothing particularly special about P.O.W. the Escape<\/strong>. It\u2019s a fairly typical example of an 80s action movie right down to the hero that wraps himself in the American flag. It literally happens about 75 minutes in. It has a lot of shooting, explosions and good old-fashioned ass kicking. The Vietnamese bad guys are total stereotypes. It functions exactly as it\u2019s supposed to. You can\u2019t ask for more than that, can you? Well, you could, but you\u2019d be wasting your time.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.O.W. the Escape (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, language, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Gideon Amir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Malcolm Barbour, James Bruner, Avi Kleinberger, John Langley and Jeremy Lipp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Storrs\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Yehiel Ne\u2019eman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 4, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: David Carradine, Charles R. Floyd, Steve James, Phil Brock, Mako, Daniel Demorest, Tony […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-b-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/POW-the-Escape-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7023"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7366,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7023\/revisions\/7366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}