In most respects, Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders' Return With Honor, an exceptional documentary about American POWs in Vietnam, has very little in common with the simultaneously released Regret To Inform, Barbara Sonneborn's personal look at war widows on all sides of the conflict. But in a fundamental sense, both are vital testaments to the mind's power to suppress painful memories and a great documentarian's ability to gain access to them nearly 30 years after the fact. As if inspired by the subject of their fine, Oscar-winning Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision—a portrait of the Chinese-American architect who designed the Vietnam Memorial—Mock and Sanders have fashioned a simple, intently focused tribute to veterans who endured unimaginable hardships for their country. Arranging candid interviews and heretofore-unseen North Vietnamese archival footage, the film starts in 1964, when "Ev" Alvarez, a prisoner for eight and a half years (the longest period of captivity for any American in history), was shot down in the Gulf Of Tonkin. Alvarez and 19 fellow POWs speak frankly about their experiences at the Hanoi Hilton and other dank confines, where they were systematically tortured under Ho Chi Minh's regime. Among them are such recognizable figures as Arizona Sen. John McCain, who refused the compromised conditions of early release and was tortured horribly as a result, and James Stockdale, best known as Ross Perot's loopy running mate in 1992, who attempted suicide and spent much of his seven and a half years in solitary confinement. Given the nature of other projects that salute bravery and courage, Return With Honor would seem ideologically loaded, but Mock and Sanders just ask the right questions and allow the veterans' astonishing testimonials to take form. It's hard to imagine how anyone, no matter their political persuasion, would be anything but awed by their heroism.