Best movie of this year hands down!

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Typical and inaccurate Hollywood portrayal of men in a difficult situation during war. Showing the American fighting man the way Hollywood wishes he were. Completely false portrayal of a situation that an NCO with 19 years service, including WW II and Korea could have handled easily. The prisoner would have been kept in the ship's brig or some locked space not in the same room as the soldiers. They would not have obeyed the orders of an ROK officer to kill the prisoner. There would have been no hesitation about ignoring the order. No soldier would kill a prisoner he had under complete control behind the front lines. Another thing, using a B-25 as a North Korean bomber was a laugh. In 1953 the US had complete control of the air over all of Korea South of the range of Chinese MIG-15s.

I didn't make it through to the end, beckoned instead to the comforting embrace of Morpheus. From the one hour that I saw, there was little evidence that I'd missed much. If you take away the name stars, what you wind up with is an inexpensive and very talky B feature.Kirk Douglas is Master Sergeant Briscoe, in command of two enlisted men, the erratic but compliant PFC Nick Adams, and the humanitarian youngster, Robert Walker Jr. They are the last men to leave a post in Korea, aboard a UN-chartered freighter, captained by Nehemia Persoff. As they leave, they pick up a downed North Korean aviator, half drowned. The Republic of Korea is in charge of the operation and over the radio the commander orders Douglas to kill the prisoner.There are some nice touches. Persoff runs a practical ship, full of highly explosive gasoline, under a neutral Finnish flag. Ordinarily a situation like this calls for a ship crawling with rats and manned by greasy, scarred, and rebellious lascars. Not in this case. Persoff's ship is tidy and he has a French cook who serves up beef Bourguignon, petite pois, and a robust and determined French wine with a fine nose.There are very few action scenes, not particularly well done but a welcome interruption to the drama taking place aboard the vessel.That's about it. The characters argue mostly, but not exclusively, over who is going to shoot and kill the friendly prisoner, Kim, with that .45. Each role is as subtle as a truck. Not even the banter sounds quite right. I suspect the novel might have been better than this adaptation.Most of the time it resembles a staged play. The three soldiers and their prisoner sit in their cabin and argue. Occasionally there is a visit from the captain or the steward. The men are groomed not like grunts who have been in a combat zone but rather like Hollywood stars. Douglas' moussed hair hasn't a strand out of place. All three were shaved that morning by the studio barber.Douglas does all right by the role of the sarcastic and ruthless sergeant, tormented by memories of child abuse. You see, that's why he's so tough on his men, especially the boyish non-actor Robert Walker Jr. Douglas is reenacting the role of his brutal father. (Ho hum.) I hope the Korean kid made it to the end of the movie. That's more than I could do.

It's 1953 in the wee small hours of the Korean War winding down. While the peace talks proceed slowly at Panmunjom, the UN forces are evacuating their positions as the truce lines come into being. But the fighting still goes on. Another Korean War film, Pork Chop Hill, also dealt with this time of the war which President Truman called a police action.A Korean pilot in a MIG Jet attacks some US soldiers who are loading supplies on a freighter and only three of them survive, Kirk Douglas, Robert Walker, Jr., and Nick Adams. Later on the pilot of the MIG is shot down and he's picked up by the freighter that the three soldiers are on with the supplies which includes a lot of barrels of oil. Radioing for instructions, Kirk Douglas is told by a South Korean major to kill the North Korean pilot. He's certainly up for it, he's a veteran from this war and World War II. Walker doesn't want to and Adams is kind of on the fence because he's personally loyal to Douglas who got him out of a jam once.The majority of The Hook is spent on the conflict between the three GIs. It's a rather unreal story because these three would be up for war crimes charges, Walker realizes this best. But two wars against oriental people have given Douglas some pronounced views on the subject. The holes in the script are covered up by the performances of the cast.Nehemiah Persoff turns in a fine performance as the ship's captain who on his ship is the one in charge. But the best acting is done by Filipino player Enrique Magalona as the confused and frightened North Korean prisoner.Pork Chop Hill is a better film, but The Hook is not a bad one. The ending is ironic to say the least.

Kirk Douglas runs the gamut of emotion from about A to C, and most of the rest of the performances are similarly limited. In other words, some better actors would have made this a better picture. The most convincing performance comes from Enrique Mangalona as the POW, who, speaking no English, is almost silent throughout.It's by no means action-packed. The action all takes place on board a neutral ship, on which three US servicemen wrestle with their consciences which get in the way of their murdering a Korean POW.It's a psychological think-piece, but it's tense and quite involving. It's not in the class of Twelve Angry Men, but it's that sort of genre.Not worth staying in for, or renting the video, but very likely better than the crud on the other channels, given that it's most likely to be shown as a space filler in the small hours.