Why did this get such a bad rating?

The Korean War was controversial, but not because anyone in the U.S. (besides the miniscule Communist Party) took an "anti-American" stand (unlike Vietnam, where many Americans marched waving Vietcong flags and praised Ho Chi Minh). People just felt it was an unwinnable, endless war.

This movie got weak reviews because it insisted on inserting idiotic and preposterous melodramatics amidst what could have been a harsh and realistic depiction of what POWs suffered in North Korean prison camps. The drunk scene with Reagan and Dewey Martin, the ridiculous and unbelievable kidnapping and murder of the Soviet commander by Steve Forrest (and Reagan's discovering the body and grabbing Forrest's dogtags in the nick of time -- how did either man get out of the camp up onto that hill anyway?), the one-dimensional silliness of the Korean and Russian characters (and the not much more complex depiction of Americans) -- all of this was just too ridiculous to make the film believable and successful.

It's a shame, because they had an opportunity to give a genuine (and, thus, much more harrowing) account of the mistreatment of American and Allied POWs by the North Koreans, and blew it by drowning the film in too many asinine Hollywood cliches and stupid plot developments. Some of the scenes showing torture and deprivation are powerful, and there could have been a grim but effective and honest portrayal of the camps and prisoner mistreatment, without the phony and improbable plot lines -- starting with Reagan's parachuting into North Korea and just walking into a column of prisoners, all to get the inside scoop on the Communists' tactics -- as if his actions could gain any significant publicity or change anything.

The apparent idea behind the film was sound, but its execution, while effective in a few places, was overall unreal and illogical. It deserved its relatively poor reviews. I enjoy it mostly for its preposterous parts rather than its few accurate moments.

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Honestly, why do you think that movies that now tell the nazi side of the story are hailed as good movies

How many acclaimed movies can you name that are told from the viewpoint of the Nazis? More specifically, how many can you name that are sympathetic to the Nazi cause (as opposed to films that are sympathetic to Germans and others who found themselves caught up in the system but who didn't necessarily support the extreme actions of their leaders)?

I'll answer for you: Not very many.

But go on raging against those straw people who automatically dislike any film that isn't anti-American.

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Some people prefer to review movies based on their political content rather than their merits and with some, that is the case with this film.

And what do you think the rest of your post constitutes, if not a lot of politically-based invective against critics of this film, based solely on your political leanings?

You know, it is possible for an "anti-Communist" movie to be bad, and having nothing to do with its ideology. Ultimately, how one judges a movie's artistic merit is entirely a matter of opinion, but you're doing just what you criticize this movie's critics of doing: judging it (and them) by your personal political views, and by what you claim their political beliefs to be.

And by the way, most liberals are anti-communists. Saying they "do not fundamentally object to communism and see communists as victims of the system" is a false and idiotic statement, akin to someone saying that all conservatives have no real problem with fascism. You can't make sweeping statements like that with any semblance of truth or validity. It was liberals of both parties who laid the groundwork to fight the cold war in the late 40s, over the objections of most conservatives and isolationists.

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