DENVER, Colorado - An Emmy-winning actor who once played a downed fighter pilot in an action movie is narrating a television advertisement for Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was shot down in real life as a Naval pilot during the Vietnam War.

The 60-second commercial for McCain’s presidential campaign, which will play in the battleground state of New Mexico before being aired more widely, is narrated by the gravelly voiced actor Powers Boothe , who has also appeared in popular television series like “24″ and “Deadwood.”

The commercial opens with spotty black-and-white footage of McCain interviewed in a hospital bed in Hanoi shortly after he was shot down piloting a Navy attack aircraft in 1967.

Smoking a cigarette, he gives his rank as lieutenant commander, describes ejecting from his aircraft and breaking a leg and both arms. He then goes on to give his service number — 624787.

The vintage footage of McCain as a young POW is cut together with images of the now 71-year-old Arizona senator on the campaign trail, urging American voters to “Stand up. We’re Americans. We’re Americans.”

Boothe, whose narration threads together the ad, played a downed F-15 pilot in “Red Dawn,” an over-the-top Cold War action movie released in 1984, about an American high school militia that turned back an invasion by Cuban and Soviet paratroops. In the last season of the hit TV program”24,” Boothe portrayed Vice President Noah Daniels, who briefly assumed the presidency after a terrorist attack.

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