Pretty good pre-Code melodrama (there's even a fairly graphic shower scene) with an impressively gritty World War I prison camp ambiance, and pleasingly complicated morality. Leslie Howard, doing his usual noble-sufferer thing, nevertheless plays a morally ambiguous hero who, given a chance for unspeakable revenge against his best friend, takes it. Fairbanks, as the friend, plays a severely flawed man, yet makes his way to a happy ending, as does Margaret Lindsay, as an adulteress who doesn't have to die for it. Paul Lukas, the commander of the camp, is polished and dignified, and plays a wholly admirable German--not something you saw in a lot of American movies set in either World War. It looks quite expensive, especially the aerial sequences, and there's real rhythm to the editing. It ends abruptly, and I wouldn't have minded more flashbacks to know the Howard/Lindsay story more thoroughly, but what's there is tense and compelling.
