A biography of Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, who had been rambunctious in childhood before succeeding in track and eventually serving in the military, which led to a trial in which he was forced to find a way to survive in the open ocean after being shot down.

"Deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan, and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded Churchill. [He] arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, there to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels. But just two weeks after his arrival, the soldiers he was accompanying on...

Dramatization of the life of Louis Zamperini, 5000-meter runner at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After his bomber crashed in the Pacific in 1943, he survived 47 days adrift in a small boat before being arrested by the Japanese and held in prisoner-of-war camps until the end of the war in 1945.