Remembering Viet Nam

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

It is as an earnest attempt to redress a festering grievance, not as film art, that The Hanoi Hilton deserves attention. Writer-Director Lionel Chetwynd's intention is to re-create the life endured in North Viet Nam's Hoa Lo prison by American POWs, in some cases for as long as eight years. Their lot consisted of systematic degradation, maddening isolation and the grinding $ waste of years, punctuated by episodes of ghastly pain. But, presented artlessly, this is not the stuff of compelling drama. There is not enough filth in the corners, not enough ambiguity when the movie shows prisoners resisting the pressure to confess to "war crimes." Chetwynd has recruited an able cast, led by Michael Moriarty, Jeffrey Jones and Paul Le Mat, and he does well with the bitter ironies implicit in visits to the prison by celebrity peace delegations. But at best he generates only a distant compassion for his subjects. The kind of vivid identification that a film like Midnight Express created eludes him. Still, if American POWs deserve in the end a higher art than Chetwynd commands, they are at least entitled to the respect he accords their heroism. R.S.