Hanks Touts 'Nam Documentary

Tom Hanks is putting his considerable clout behind a film that documents the horrors of war. It's not Saving Private Ryan. This time, the Oscar winner is lending his name to Return With Honor, a movie about Vietnam's war heroes.

At the movie's premiere in Washington, D.C., CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews spoke with Hanks about his involvement.

It is unusual to see a star promote a movie in which he does not appear. But, for Hanks, Return With Honor isn't just another movie. It's a stark documentary about the dozens of U.S. pilots captured, imprisoned, and tortured by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

"I came out of this thinking it's the greatest motion picture I've ever seen," says Hanks. " This film takes human beings that look like our dad and our dry cleaner and the guy who lives across the street, and instead turns it into almost a question of what would you do if you were in that circumstance?"

Books have been written on the horrors of the "Hanoi Hilton." But, in the movie, the survivors speak for themselves, sometimes over original footage that the Vietnamese have released for the first time.

"It brings back memories," says former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Bob Shumaker, who was a POW. "Where we really get emotional is when we think what might have been, how our wives were reacting at the time."

For Hanks, this promotion is part of his effort to build a monument to the veterans of World War II. He sees a connection to the sacrifices made in Vietnam.

Unlike those in Saving Private Ryan, the men in Return With Honor are not actors.