Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 10, 2025

It was a brutal slog filled with frequent smackdowns, horrifying torture and no end in sight. Wait a minute — are we talking about the Bataan Death March or Prisoner of War? It may not matter all that much, given that the opening sentence is probably a fair assessment of both "events", albeit in the case of the film the torture is arguably inflicted equally on the audience as well as some of the characters in the actual story. Perhaps just a bit hilariously, press verbiage accompanying this release touts star Scott Adkins as offering a "career best performance", which frankly may be damning with faint praise, but joking aside, Adkins' stolid if not exactly exciting screen persona and action chops (literal and/or figurative) help give this arguably ridiculous tale some, well, punch and kick.

The screenplay is so patently ridiculous that it almost defies description, but suffice it to say bookending sequences include an opening vignette set in 1950 which introduces erstwhile British Special Air Service officer James Wright (Scott Adkins), who barges into a Tokyo dojo run by Shunsuke Ito (Kansuke Yokoi), who it turns out is the son of Lt. Col. Benjiro Ito (Peter Shinkoda), a ruthless prisoner of war commandant who had been Wright's nemesis during World War II. Suffice it to say this is the kind of writing where info dumps are relayed courtesy of often absurd dialogue, but one way or the other after Wright basically takes out all of Shunsuke's students (you expected the film to open any other way?), we get the completely expected long interstitial flashback documenting the horrors Wright experienced in 1942, as the Bataan Death March is becoming more and more imminent.

That might seem like an okay setup for a film, but the absurdities only mount, though some sources at least allude to the fact that some elements of this film bear at least passing resemblances to actual historical facts as portrayed in Unbroken. Suffice it to say there's an artificiality about this enterprise despite attempts to make it all very gritty that may defeat any sense that we're being offered anything even close to real history. The bottom line is that once imprisoned, Wright is forced to compete in quasi-gladiatorial combat for the amusement of the martinet Lt. Col. Ito. Why, you may well ask, and the answer is simple: Scott Adkins.

The film frankly kind of stumbles its way toward a bittersweet conclusion, which at least sees Wright and a small cohort escape the upcoming march (courtesy of a completely ridiculous Deus ex Machina conceit), only to have things return back to the dojo, for, yep, the "Big Boss" showdown between Wright and Ito fils. Guess who wins, but who shows mercy to his victim. Guess who then reveals he has a gift for Wright, despite all that has gone before. It's enough to make the Bataan Death March seem like a viable alternative.

While probably not qualifying as a "rave", Brian Orndorf evidently was considerably more entertained by the film than I was. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Prisoner of War is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative information on the shoot or DI, though there's an Arri logo in the closing credits roll, but this is a decently detailed digital capture that has a kind of understandably tamped down palette a lot of the time. That means that tones tend to be in the khaki uniform to muddy brown background range, so that there's not much "pop" aside from perhaps some of the nurse's bright blue uniforms. There's some pretty substandard CGI of planes at various points, but actual fine detail on practical items fares much better. A surplus of extreme close-ups helps to elevate fine detail on faces, bodies and some gruesome wounds.

Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Prisoner of War features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track ostensibly in English, though there are smatterings of Japanese. The track gets a lot of its surround activity unsurprisingly from its action sequences. That is evident from the veritable get go as Wright takes on Ito's dojo students and pretty easily dispels of any threat, but a lot of the later camp material, whether fight-centric or otherwise, provides good engagement of the side and rear channels to deliver both ambient environmental other sound effects. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:59)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Packaging features a slipcover.

Prisoner of War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fans of Adkins will probably get more than enough to warrant checking this out, but even those acolytes may have a hard time swallowing the plot mechanics and clunky dialogue Prisoner of War offers. Technical merits are generally solid for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.