This movie is well worth watching. It concerns a Korean war POW who returns home and is subject to a court-martial on charges of collaborating with the enemy. Paul Newman, as war veteran Capt. Edward Worthington Hall Jr., shows signs of the powerful actor he would later become, and the supporting cast is excellent. I particularly liked Wendell Corey as the somewhat reluctant but duty-bound prosecutor.
The Korean War seems to have been a particularly grizzly affair where torture was common and the Geneva Convention flouted. In post Abu Ghraib 2006, torture is of current interest and gives "The Rack" added relevance. In showing that a strong and decorated officer like Captain Worthington can be broken, the unfortunate message is that torture does work on occasion.
We all know that each of us has a breaking point, but the concept explored here is what makes some people, Captain Worthington in this case, succumb before that point is reached. The emphasis is on mental torture - trying to figure out just what the crucial vulnerability is in a personality and exploiting that. For Worthington it was loneliness, his mother having died young and his father being a martinet. The thing that pushed him over the edge was losing his brother in the war. But, by his own admission, he never felt that he had reached his breaking point. The message is that most of us are stronger than we think and we rarely get pushed, or push ourselves, to our limits and beyond.
The issues are argued in detail in the court-martial and one conclusion posited by the defense is that maybe the country was in some part responsible for what happened to Captain Worthington - the soldiers were never trained for what they encountered in the war and the populace was pretty much ignorant about who we were fighting and the reason for it. As the Iraq war grinds on Santayana's quote comes to mind, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
With such strong themes and excellent performances, why is this only a good and not a great movie? For me it was a lot of little things. Like when Lee Marvin comes into a room in the hospital where the patients are watching a movie and he comes up behind Newman and hangs a noose around his neck with a "Traitor" sign attached. When Newman pursues Marvin to talk with him, Marvin flees down the hallway. Some bothersome things here. How did Marvin make this item? Being on crutches it seems unlikely he was carrying this thing around with him at all times just waiting for the right moment. And Marvin was presented as an aggressive macho man, so his flight in the face of potential confrontation was out of character. This scene could have been much more effective. A pivotal point Newman makes in his defense is "My father never kissed me." To single that out as a way a saying that his father was remote and unaffectionate seemed odd to me. There are a lot of loving and affectionate fathers who never kissed their sons. That line just seemed in there to set up the scene in the car where Newman's father does kiss him, but that awkward out-of-character part of the scene in the car seemed forced to me. Just as actors should never seem to be acting, screenplays should never have such obvious plot devices.
All told, this is an admirable film coming so soon after the Korean war and forcing consideration of issues that I'm sure the country was eager to forget.
The Korean War seems to have been a particularly grizzly affair where torture was common and the Geneva Convention flouted. In post Abu Ghraib 2006, torture is of current interest and gives "The Rack" added relevance. In showing that a strong and decorated officer like Captain Worthington can be broken, the unfortunate message is that torture does work on occasion.
We all know that each of us has a breaking point, but the concept explored here is what makes some people, Captain Worthington in this case, succumb before that point is reached. The emphasis is on mental torture - trying to figure out just what the crucial vulnerability is in a personality and exploiting that. For Worthington it was loneliness, his mother having died young and his father being a martinet. The thing that pushed him over the edge was losing his brother in the war. But, by his own admission, he never felt that he had reached his breaking point. The message is that most of us are stronger than we think and we rarely get pushed, or push ourselves, to our limits and beyond.
The issues are argued in detail in the court-martial and one conclusion posited by the defense is that maybe the country was in some part responsible for what happened to Captain Worthington - the soldiers were never trained for what they encountered in the war and the populace was pretty much ignorant about who we were fighting and the reason for it. As the Iraq war grinds on Santayana's quote comes to mind, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
With such strong themes and excellent performances, why is this only a good and not a great movie? For me it was a lot of little things. Like when Lee Marvin comes into a room in the hospital where the patients are watching a movie and he comes up behind Newman and hangs a noose around his neck with a "Traitor" sign attached. When Newman pursues Marvin to talk with him, Marvin flees down the hallway. Some bothersome things here. How did Marvin make this item? Being on crutches it seems unlikely he was carrying this thing around with him at all times just waiting for the right moment. And Marvin was presented as an aggressive macho man, so his flight in the face of potential confrontation was out of character. This scene could have been much more effective. A pivotal point Newman makes in his defense is "My father never kissed me." To single that out as a way a saying that his father was remote and unaffectionate seemed odd to me. There are a lot of loving and affectionate fathers who never kissed their sons. That line just seemed in there to set up the scene in the car where Newman's father does kiss him, but that awkward out-of-character part of the scene in the car seemed forced to me. Just as actors should never seem to be acting, screenplays should never have such obvious plot devices.
All told, this is an admirable film coming so soon after the Korean war and forcing consideration of issues that I'm sure the country was eager to forget.