Colonel Allen is head of a military unit that has one sole purpose, to assassinate any world leader the U.S. Government thinks is a treat to them. On January 1, 2003, 24-year old Marine Corps sniper Oscar Padilla is sent to take out Saddam Hussein but when things go wrong he is captured instead and tortured inside a Baghdad prison ans is forced to watch as his fellow American soldier has his head cut off. Eventually freed and back in the United States the experience he suffered leaves Oscar with many emotional problems so he is put in a military hospital to be looked at but when things get to be too much he escapes. Now Colonel Allen must hunt him down and take him out before he harms others.

By reading the above the film seems like many others that have been made about a soldier gone bad but Purple Heart is nothing like those and maybe nothing like you have seen before. To go too deep into the story would ruin it for those that want to see this film so I am not going to go any deeper. The film has a great cast including William Sadler as Colonel Allen and he is fantastic as always making his character very believable. The film also star's Mel Harris as the doctor assigned to look after Oscar when he entered the hospital, this woman has always been a reliable actress and again she proves it here. I felt that the weak link as far as the cast goes was Demetrius Navarro, sure his acting is very important here and he does a fine job for the most part but at times he seemed to have problems with a few of the more emotional scenes. The film is about this one man but it's also about what any government might do to even their own if they feel there's an outside treat and how they will use force first before looking into some other way to solve the problem at hand. Purple Heart is not only a powerful film with a stellar cast and great direction but it's also a film that is thought-provoking and shocking at the same time. I highly recommend seeing this film and credit has to go to Director William Birrell for taking on such a daring subject matter, maybe that's why this never got the attention it deserves when it was originally released. Released by Indican Pictures. **** Out Of *****