Synopsis:
Starring martial arts icon Scott Adkins as British SAS officer James Wright, PRISONER OF WAR tells the story of a soldier captured by the Japanese and held in a Philippine POW camp. Before the entire colony embarks upon the Bataan Death March, Wright and his fellow prisoners are forced to compete in brutal death matches for the entertainment of their captors. Adkins puts in a career best performance as the man who may be able to save them all.
What We Thought:
We’ve seen many POW movies before, but as a fan of Scott Adkins I enjoyed Prisoner of War. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, but Adkins is probably the most underrated action actor going and he has some tremendous fight sequences in the film.
Adkins plays a British SAS officer who crashes in Japanese occupied Philippines. I’m not sure if it’s based on a particular person or story, but it seems believable enough. You don’t watch these films for historical accuracy anyways, you watch them to see Adkins punch and kick people and you get plenty of that here.
Louis Mandylor has knocked out a few of these types of movies already and I think I’ve seen them all. I grew up on straight-to-video action movies getting rented at my local video store so I have no issue with these types of movies. They won’t make big bucks at the box office, but they have a huge fandom who don’t mind straight-to-video/streaming flicks. Sure the rescue scene with the glider looks bad because it doesn’t have the budget to make it look great, but I’m watching this for Adkins and Adkins only.
If you like Scott Adkins fight films you’ll dig Prisoner of War. It has plenty of martial arts action and plenty of fighting that will have you cheering. It won’t be confused for an Oscar worthy World War II film, but I don’t expect it to. Sometimes you just want to be entertained for 90-120 minutes and it does that well.
The Nerds Templar 