[2][3] It was directed by Arnold Laven and stars Paul Newman, Wendell Corey, Anne Francis, Lee Marvin and Walter Pidgeon.

Having survived two years in a Korean prisoner-of-war camp, Captain Edward W. Hall Jr. returns home to a US Army post in San Francisco.

Pete's widow, Aggie Hall, confides to her friend Caroline it is difficult to be around her brother-in-law without painful reminders of her lost husband.

John Miller, reveals scars received from enemy inflicted torture, but claims he never conceded to his captors anything but his name, rank and serial number.

This includes how he was ordered to bury other soldiers, dead or alive; how he carried a wounded man for four days so he wouldn't collapse and be placed in a grave; solitary confinement for months at a time, denied light and company and forced to live in his own excrement.

Facing repeated demands to read propaganda statements, Hall relented but wrote one himself, using language that attempted to mock the enemy's purpose.

[5] Bosley Crowther praised Newman's "brilliantly detailed performance" and the supporting actors in a New York Times review, but he criticized the film as "dramatically thin.