Cheap Prisoner of Honor (Video) (Ken Russell) Price

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Customer Reviews of Prisoner of Honor

An excellent film with an objective perspective
This film is a very pleasant surprise. Usually movies based on the so-called antisemitic incidents tend to be schmalzy and overdone, with bad guys badly demonized and good guys godly idealized (see, for example, "The Fixer" or "Schindler's List".) "Prisoner of Honor" does not suffer from such shortcomings - Picquard's dislike of Jews is not passed over, and reasonable motives of some of his opponents are not suppressed, either. Richard Dreyfus (one of the film's producers) is truly excellent in the role of Colonel Picquard, and the supporting crew (mostly British actors, including the late Oliver Reed) does a very good job indeed. The ironic touch, so typical of the director Ken Russell ("The Devils", "Mahler"), which drew the undeserved ire of the previous reviewer, definitely adds color and nerve to the entire show. All in all, a film truly worth watching.

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A Dreyfuss affair a fair 'Dreyfus affair'?
This is an accurate account of the famous (infamous, more likely)<
>Dreyfus affair, a scandal that nearly drove France to civil war at the<
>turn of the century. And it could have been a good movie too, if<
>director Ken Rusell hadn't overdone it miserably by pretending<
>"the whole thing was a comedy"!

The film manages to get<
>its facts right (a rare acomplishment for a Hollywood movie), features<
>an elaborate production, with fine costumes and sets (although its<
>'Paris' resembles London), and boasts a great cast led by Richard<
>Dreyfuss, who gives an above-his-usual performance as the officer<
>trying against all odds to save Dreyfus, while disliking him<
>personally for being a Jew.

Why, then, spoil it with all those<
>cartoonish "comic" details that serve no purpose whatsoever,<
>except to ruin the whole picture?: A French general, at work, dresses<
>as Zeus for a portrait (its painter complete with pointy moustaches<
>and a red beret!) later on display in his office. Another general (a<
>fat, grumpy, bearded lout who looks a lot like Bud Spencer, and sinks<
>every scene he's into) sings child-like racist songs with his junior<
>officers at an elegant military club that seems to accept all ranks<
>inside its halls, for one sees in one room the entire French army,<
>from maréchales to privates, getting drunk, pounding tables and<
>shouting at each other in their messed up uniforms. There's a War<
>Minister serving cake to his subordinates, a chanteuse lampooning 'La<
>Marsellaise' (the French applaud!), a German officer -pickelhaube and<
>all- dancing with a male spy in drag, and a sinister meeting inside a<
>church, with generals sniggering as they cross themselves. My, oh my!<
>Aren't these the bad guys!

Seems to me, the director tried so hard<
>to stress the point, he completely missed it. ....<
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