It's 1945. The POW camp Changi jail, Singapore holds most British prisoners from early in the war. They are imprisoned by the jungle and the far distances. American Corporal King (George Segal) lives comfortably from his various schemes in contrast to everybody else's near-starvation. Military police Lieutenant Grey is fixated on bringing down King and his selfish corruption. After catching a rat, he comes up with an idea to breed them and sell rat meat as mouse deer. King befriends British officer Lt. Peter Marlowe (James Fox) who is taken with King's methods.POW films are often grand escape films. Sure there are some scheming douches but they are all villainous types. This one makes the schemer an anti-hero. He doesn't become good to join the war effort. He is a complicated person with complicated motives. The world is a dog-eat-dog world. It's a great character. George Segal plays him with a bit of sleaze and a bit of charm but he is not a villain. He is simply the King Rat.

. . . to literal hot dog. KING RAT is a gastronomical smörgåsbord of WWII P.O.W. fare, from bugs to yolks. A sense of dread pervades KING RAT for most of its two and a quarter hour running time, even though the camp's Japanese captors rarely are on-screen. A sizable cemetery is shown for prisoners who've previously been executed, starved to death, or died from disease, but only a few fatalities are implied during the final months of the war covered by this story. There are no killings on-camera. Essentially, KING RAT is a "chick flick" for men, as the entire show focuses on the emotional relationships that develop between men under duress. No females appear anywhere, unless you count hens and rats. KING RAT is "fair and balanced," as Fox News likes to say, since none of the Japanese atrocities covered by such films as THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI are depicted here. KING RAT is NOT John Wayne's type of war movie. It's more like THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, without the nude girls, profanity, and booze.

Pretty much everything has been said in the other reviews. The only thing I can add is that the book SHOULD be read before watching the movie. I just watched the film on "AntennaTV". It ran for 3 hours(w/lots of commercials) and while it was a good adaptation of the book it didn't come close to the character/plot development needed to really appreciate the film. What struck me was the realization that if I hadn't read the book I would have been relatively clueless to a lot of what, and why, things were happening in the film. I don't fault the screenplay or the director. There was just so much going on that it would've been impossible to cover it in 130(?) minutes.It's been 25 years since I first read the book and, since then, I've probably read it more times than any other book I own.In short, read the book and then watch the film. You'll get sooooo much more out of it.

I have no doubt that if William Holden's Sergeant Sefton from Stalag 17 ever met up with George Segal's Corporal King from King Rat, King would survive easily. He's got a much tougher chance for survival where he is in the Malayan jungle in a Japanese prisoner camp.Segal is quite the operator in fact had he been captured alone as William Holden did in that other famous POW part he played in The Bridge of the River Kwai, Segal would probably have swapped identities with an officer and he'd have made it work for him better than Holden did in his role. As it is he's doing a pretty good job of surviving, he's a street smart American kid from the slums for who this is just another jail and that's something he knows about.That doesn't sit well with King and country British officer Tom Courtenay who spends every minute trying to nail Segal on something, anything from collaboration to theft. Segal proves too cagey for him.In fact one way or another everyone does whatever he has to do to survive, something that Courtenay never learns. Even camp prisoner commander John Mills recognizes reality.The Japanese are rarely seen here, unlike in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Presumably these guys are so deep in the jungle they need very little guards. Living on subsistence diet, the mostly British prisoner population police themselves and not once is there an attempt at an escape.James Clavell who wrote the epic Shogun and Taipan about the Orient was a prisoner of war and wrote King Rat in collaboration with director Bryan Forbes who got great performances out of his mostly British cast. Two I didn't mention are James Fox who becomes Segal's interpreter and mistakes his usefulness for friendship and Patrick O'Neal who plays Segal's go-fer sycophant.King Rat got two Oscar nominations for Black and white cinematography and art&set design and lost both to Ship of Fools. It ranks up there with the two William Holden classics as among the best prisoner of war films done. Definitely catch this one when broadcast.