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No, it's not about the first moon landings, although it sounds as if it should be. It's about a group of German soldiers led by Michael Caine and aided by Donald Southerland as an Irishman, who parachute into England in an attempt to kidnap Winston Churchill and bring an end to the war. They fail, which can't be too big a surprise.
The movie's plot is all over the place. Caine and his men are disguised as British paratroopers and they more or less take over a small British village, claiming to be on an exercise. But they wear their German uniforms under their fake British uniforms, and one of the men while saving the life of a young girl, dies and has his true identity revealed. This happens rather early in the movie, so the whole disguise business lasts only about 15 minutes. After that, the movie becomes routine. The Germans strip to field gray and hole up in a church. They are surrounded and outnumbered by American rangers and fight to the death, although it's not clear why they just don't surrender. The war is nearly over.
What lifts the movie a bit above the expectable -- and this may be completely accidental -- is that it's not easy for the average viewer, used to watching less complicated material like Funniest Home Videos, to figure out which side to root for.
The Germans of course have been fighting for an evil cause. Yet, in this instance at least, they are men of probity and honor. Their goal is not to assassinate Churchill (if that can be avoided) but to put the snatch on him and try to negotiate a settlement with the Allies. And you can tell the people who made the movie did not want a horde of hairy Huns playing goose-stepping Nazi types because the soldiers look like young men. One of them seems to be still in his teens and plays Bach on the church organ.
And the U. S. Army that we see is led by a Colonel who is, as far as it's possible to tell, a complete idiot. The actor, Larry Hagman, hams it up outrageously, but it doesn't come across as comic, just stupid. His Colonel is so puffed up with ego, so angry at not having been allowed to see combat, that he chews out subordinates all the time and struts around with tiny mincing steps. When a woman finally puts a bullet through his head and he looks a little indignant -- well, it almost funny but not quite.
Donald Southerland is a stage Irishman of a type we've seen before -- all charm and rosy cheeks. He laughs gaily at the prospect of putting his life in danger. He's romantic, falls in love with the wrong girl, likes a drop now and then, and is always ready for a fist fight.
At the end, Caine finds himself in a position to shoot and kill Churchill. His face turns grim. He approaches the PM who stares at him with horror, and he deliberately shoots the guy. (Who turns out to be a mere stand-in for the real Churchill.) I don't know why he did that. It's not really in keeping with what we've seen of Caine's character so far. He's a proud man but not a cold-blooded murderer. I suspect the scene is in there to give the audience a momentary frisson -- "WHAT? Churchill DEAD?" It's pretty corny but then there are other banal scenes throughout the movie. The true identity of the Germans is revealed only through the hoary device of having one of the soldiers save an enemy's daughter from drowning and giving his own life in the process.
The script is poor and the direction ordinary but the performances are competent enough, given what the actors have to work with. Jenny Agutter's nose turns up like a ski jump, like the inverted clipper bow of a Japanese battleship, like the trajectory of a freshly launched shuttle from Cape Canaveral. Any normal man would want to kiss it and bite it a little. Judy Geason looks just fine too. It wasn't nice of the writers to have her shot, but at least she survives.
score 5/10
rmax304823 28 December 2005
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1249002/ |
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7-6-2020 11:12:12