This compelling documentary film narrated by Tom Hanks tells the powerful and moving story of American pilots shot down in the Vietnam war and the challenge to survive with honor as POWs for up to eight and a half years. View clip below.
The film is a testament to heroism, courage, ingenuity, faith, endurance
and brotherhood under extreme duress. It tells of the sudden transformation
– after a harrowing shoot down and capture – from self-confident,
top-gun type aviators to prisoners of war confronting years of captivity.
It is a story of survival – physical, mental and spiritual –
told in the pilots’ own words, rich with survivor humor and with
footage never before seen from the archives of North Vietnam. It is also
the story of the wives left behind who for years did not know “whether
they were wives or widows.” And it is the story of a government,
which plunged America into a war to which it could not predict an end.
Finally, it is a universal story of honor, love, and duty.
Return With Honor is about the resilience of the human spirit, told with
riveting first person accounts from an ensemble cast of dozens of fighter
pilots – from Ev Alvarez, the first shot down in North Vietnam (August
5, 1964), to senior ranking officers, Jim Stockdale, Jerry Denton and
Korean War ace Robbie Risner, to Naval Academy graduate John McCain.
Return With Honor was filmed in Hanoi, Vietnam and in communities across
the U.S. The 102-minute feature film was completed in time for the 25th
anniversary of the release of the POWs. |