Hanoi Hilton, The: Chetwynd’s Vietnam Drama for Veteran’s Day

“Hanoi Hilton,” the harrowing film written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd about the American POW experience in North Vietnam’s most infamous prison camp, makes its DVD debut this coming Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2009.

“Hanoi Hilton” features powerful performances from Michael Moriarty (Bang the Drum Slowly, TV’s Law and Order), Paul Le Mat (American Grafitti, Melvin and Howard), David Soul (TV’s Starsky and Hutch), Doug Savant (TV’s Desperate Housewives) and Jeffrey Jones (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Amadeus).

Based on true stories collected from more than 100 POWs, the film focuses on the strong bonds that develop among the Americans as they try to resist their captors. For most combat soldiers, Vietnam was a grunt’s eye-view battlefield war of guns and grenades. But for thousands of American combatants, the battlefield was a dark, vermin-infested cell in a prison compound like Hoa Lo, the hellhole POWs called “The Hanoi Hilton.”