As the first Hollywood film based on the war in French Indochina, the story is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Bonet attempts to stop the Viet Minh attack by approaching enemy lines under a white flag but is gunned down.

[3] In a contemporary review for the Los Angeles Mirror-News, critic Margaret Harford wrote: "At the fort, action picks up considerably, but the script remains the toughest battle of all.

"[4] Reviewer Frank Miller of the Turner Classic Movies website wrote that Jump into Hell is typical of the period in which films exhibited Cold War jingoism: "The spoken prologue compares the Battle of Dienbienphu to fall of the Alamo and the British evacuation at Dunkirk.

An early confrontation between French general Arnold Moss and captured Chinese officer Philip Ahn clearly identifies the enemy not as the Viet Minh, but international [c]ommunism.

"[3] Leonard Maltin called Jump into Hell a "[n]eatly paced actioner of paratroopers involved in Indochina war.