The movie starts out where a group of soldiers are being capitured by German soldiers. They traveled in train cars and struggled to stay warm on their journey. There was one time were the train when the train stopped at the German prisoner of war camp and a plane started shooting at the soldiers there. While the plane was shooting, one of the prisoners of war sacrificed himself to open up the car door for the others to get out. As the rest of the prisoners of war got out of the train, they formed the letters P O W to let the planes know they were prisoners of war so they wouldn't shoot at them.
Lt. Hart who is the son of a senator is the main character in this movie and when two African American soldiers, Scott and Archer, are put into his cabin he becomes basically the only friend to them and the guy who ends up saving Scott's life. Most of the men in the camp are racist, so when these two join the rest of them, it becomes a battle within the war for all these men. During their time in the camp, Hart notices becomes suspicous about some of the men when he sees a couple of them sneaking out at night through a secret tunnel out of their cabin. One night the German soldiers come in a look through the cabin claiming that some snuck out and was taking railroad spikes. They found a spike under Lt. Archer's bed, and assuming he was the one who did it automatically took him outside and killed him for what he had done. Issues rose when talk started especially between Scott and Bedford who Scott thinks planted the spike under Archer's bed. A few nights later Bedford leaves the cabin as he usually does, but this time Scott follows him. On that night Bedford is killed, but the mystery is who killed him because most men are claiming Scott killed him, but Scott as he found Bedford dead before he could talk to him.
A trial goes on to find out who's fault it was in killing Bedford with Hart defending Scott. hart goes on for several days working hard defending Scott, but then one night he finds out the real reason for this trial. He follows a few soldiers who snuck out and find that they are making a secret tunnel to get out of the camp, and the trial is a big cover up, so that the German soldiers don't find out about the plan to escape. Hart confronts Col. McNamara about the plan, and he tells hart to not ruin the plan and to continue the trial as planned. But during this meeting, McNamara confesses that he killed Bedford and framed Scott, so that they could follow through with their plan to escape. Hart didn't like this though; he didn't think that Scott should be punished for something is was framed for. On the last day of the trial and the day that group of soldiers planned on escaping, Hart made a surprising difference in the trial by saying that he killed Archer instead of Scott. Due to the fact that he admitted this, the German soldiers needed to round up all of the POW's to see what was going to happen to Hart. When the count was off by like 30 and Col. McNamara was not present, the Germans became suspicious. But then when almost everyone was gathered, McNamara comes back into the camp after he had escaped and admits that he killed Archer which ultimately kills him. Two weeks later the war ends, and the POW's are released.
I thought that this movie was an alright movie. I like Bruce Willis which made it more interesting for me, but overall I thought it was okay. It showed they kind of had their own little wars in the POW camps during WWII. The movie also showed how some men had to struggle to survive in the war even if they weren't actually fighting.
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