(Some Spoilers) Arriving back home from Korea highly decorated US Army Captain Ed W.Hall Jr, Paul Newman, is broken in both mind and body from the two years he spent in a brutal Communist Chinese prison camp. What Captain Hall went through in Korea in combat and in a POW prison will be nothing to what's awaiting him back in the states. It's there where he'll soon be charged with high treason in collaborating with the enemy, that may have lead to the deaths and torture of a number of his fellow GI's. For selling out his country Capt. Hill got nothing more from his communist captors then a soiled and warm blanket and hot bowl of rice soup.
Highly emotional motion picture adopted from a Rod Serling TV screenplay about collaboration with the enemy during wartime that goes into the mechanics of brainwashing by the Red Chinese that was far more effective then the torture and threats, as well as carrying them out, of death on captured allied POW's by both the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War. Capt. Hall not telling anyone of what he's to be accused of has his father Col. Edward W. Hall Sr, Walter Pidgeon, get the shocking story about his boy from a friend of his Col. Dudley "Smitty" Smith, Fay Roupe, at a party thrown in Ed Jr honor after he came back from Korea.
Captain Hall doesn't at all try to avoid the issue of his collaboration with the Red Chinese when he's put on trial before a military court-martial. Capt. Hill tries through his court appointed lawyer Lt. Col. Frank Wesnick, Edmond O'Brien, to explain how his mind was manipulated and destroyed by the Reds, or Chinese Commies, who played on his alienation from his strict gong-ho military father, Col. Ed Hall Sr, when he was a boy growing up in San Francisco. If the Reds tried to torture or even kill Captain Hall like they did to his friend and now bitter enemy Captain Miller, Lee Marvin, it wouldn't have worked since he, like Capt. Miller, was conditioned by the US military for that type of treatment while in enemy hands.
The mind is a very delicate instrument that can be easily twisted and shaped into what a maniacal bunch of scoundrels like the Red Chinese want it to be. By playing on Capt. Hall's loneliness and feelings of being deserted by his country and unloved and unwanted by his dad coupled with the shocking news, that he got while in captivity, that both his mother passed away and younger brother Pete was killed in action in Korea that in effect got the already zombie-like Capt. Hall to play right into their hands.
At his trial Capt. Hall didn't at all try to defend his actions but only tried to explain them. Even Capt. Miller, who was brutally tortured by the Reds because of Capt. Hall's collaboration with them, came to fully realize what brainwashing can do and how the person whom it's preformed on has no will or mind left to even know what he's doing.
The movie "The Rack" and its star Paul Newman as the guilt-ridden and mentally tortured Capt. Ed Hall Jr is very hard to like in it making a traitor to his country look sympathetic. Yet you begin to realize at the end of the film after a heart-wrenching speech to the court, as well as movie audience, by a tearful and utterly remorseful Capt. Hall that even the strongest and bravest of us do have our weak points. That's what the Chinese Reds counted on by getting captured GI's, and there was in the war in Korea hundreds of them, like Capt.Hall to go against everything that they loved and were willing to both fight and die for. The Communist Chinese achieved all that by putting US POW's in a cold and lonely cell and then after months of brainwashing having them do their bidding like a bunch of trained seals in a aquarium.
Highly emotional motion picture adopted from a Rod Serling TV screenplay about collaboration with the enemy during wartime that goes into the mechanics of brainwashing by the Red Chinese that was far more effective then the torture and threats, as well as carrying them out, of death on captured allied POW's by both the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War. Capt. Hall not telling anyone of what he's to be accused of has his father Col. Edward W. Hall Sr, Walter Pidgeon, get the shocking story about his boy from a friend of his Col. Dudley "Smitty" Smith, Fay Roupe, at a party thrown in Ed Jr honor after he came back from Korea.
Captain Hall doesn't at all try to avoid the issue of his collaboration with the Red Chinese when he's put on trial before a military court-martial. Capt. Hill tries through his court appointed lawyer Lt. Col. Frank Wesnick, Edmond O'Brien, to explain how his mind was manipulated and destroyed by the Reds, or Chinese Commies, who played on his alienation from his strict gong-ho military father, Col. Ed Hall Sr, when he was a boy growing up in San Francisco. If the Reds tried to torture or even kill Captain Hall like they did to his friend and now bitter enemy Captain Miller, Lee Marvin, it wouldn't have worked since he, like Capt. Miller, was conditioned by the US military for that type of treatment while in enemy hands.
The mind is a very delicate instrument that can be easily twisted and shaped into what a maniacal bunch of scoundrels like the Red Chinese want it to be. By playing on Capt. Hall's loneliness and feelings of being deserted by his country and unloved and unwanted by his dad coupled with the shocking news, that he got while in captivity, that both his mother passed away and younger brother Pete was killed in action in Korea that in effect got the already zombie-like Capt. Hall to play right into their hands.
At his trial Capt. Hall didn't at all try to defend his actions but only tried to explain them. Even Capt. Miller, who was brutally tortured by the Reds because of Capt. Hall's collaboration with them, came to fully realize what brainwashing can do and how the person whom it's preformed on has no will or mind left to even know what he's doing.
The movie "The Rack" and its star Paul Newman as the guilt-ridden and mentally tortured Capt. Ed Hall Jr is very hard to like in it making a traitor to his country look sympathetic. Yet you begin to realize at the end of the film after a heart-wrenching speech to the court, as well as movie audience, by a tearful and utterly remorseful Capt. Hall that even the strongest and bravest of us do have our weak points. That's what the Chinese Reds counted on by getting captured GI's, and there was in the war in Korea hundreds of them, like Capt.Hall to go against everything that they loved and were willing to both fight and die for. The Communist Chinese achieved all that by putting US POW's in a cold and lonely cell and then after months of brainwashing having them do their bidding like a bunch of trained seals in a aquarium.