Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing special here., December 11, 1999
As far as I know, this movie concerns some Italian-American commandos who must seize an Italian held oasis and masquerade as its garrison for two days in advance of some major American operation. Now I would have been happy if this film was a nice crackerjack action thriller. But it isn't. There's plenty of competently directed and edited action sequences and explosions, but not much style to any of it. Too bad really, there's some decent production values in this film and Lee Van Cleef stars in it. Unfortunately he's saddled with a half-baked role as hard-nosed veteran Sergeant Sullivan, haunted by flashbacks of a botched mission in Bataan, in which he was one of three survivors out of a hundred. A failure he blames on the pencil-pushing gloryhound officer who initiated it. Thus, when the inexperienced Captain Valli comes to take charge of the current mission, Sullivan is naturally wary of him. Not a bad concept, but one never too deeply explored or meaningfully resolved, just scenes of Van Cleef and Jack Kelly staring and growling at each other. Hard to believe four writers(including Dario Argento) are credited with this script. The usually fine Mario Nascimbene must have composed about five minutes of original score, not a second of which is better than monotonous. Then there are the panzers, which are post-WW2 American tanks dressed up with a desert paint scheme and Afrika Corps markings. They rumble around the background in some short sequences throughout the movie, then finally brought to bear in the big finale. And darn if they don't have more presence than most of the actors! The DVD is another D-Vision con job, most likely mastered from videotape and looking as good as it. But at least it well last a long time, right? Typical flimsy packaging and inaccurate descriptions: the disk does contain chapter stops placed roughly every 12 minutes. If anyone cares.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fairly Good Van Cleef, January 7, 2005
This Text refers to the St.Clair Vision DVD release.
St.Clair Vision have released this film in it's 2:35:1 widescreen ratio.
Not so much an anti-war film as, "there are no winners in this war" story. Picture quality is at best good though at times a little grainy.
A worthwhile purchase at a budget price, you can't beat it.
Lee Van Cleef is always worth a look.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Italian-made WWII movie - not too bad, January 10, 2009
This movie actually came out in 1968, not in 1973, and isn't too bad of a movie. I would consider it worth watching, although it's definately still a B-movie. There does seem to be an overall theme to the movie. It's not an "anti-war" war movie, but it does portray war as cruel and tragic. The basic plot is that during WWII the Americans get together a select group of Italian-American commandos who are to parachute into North Africa on a secret mission and take over a post at a desert oasis that is being held by the Italians. After they do that, they pose as Italians for a couple of days while they wait for an American battalion to arrive for an invasion. Meanwhile, while they are at the post disguised as Italian soldiers they also entertain some German officers who arrive for a visit. It's an "Italo-German" production and besides the two main American officers (actors Lee Van Cleef and Jack Kelly) the rest of the cast is mostly Italians and Germans. The Italian and German officers seem to be much more sympathethic characters than the American officers. Lee Van Cleef's character is suffering from flash-back nightmares due to his experience in the Pacific where his entire platoon of a hundred was killed at Bataan, (except for three people). He comes across as slightly crazed and somewhat ruthless. Jack Kelly's character is a "green" officer and has never seen combat. By the end of the movie, though, he seems slightly crazy and ruthless too. It seems clear that the movie is meaning to show the emotional scars of war and what terrible things can happen during war. There's several scenes where the Italians try to surrender with their hands up, and the American officers shoot them. The question of whether the American commandos should kill unarmed Italians who are surrendering, or else who are asleep in their beds, brings up some moral issues that the movie attempts to address. At the end of the movie, there's a big battle between the American commandos at the post and some Germans who have discovered their secret mission and who arrive in tanks. I don't want to give the ending away, but it's clear that the moral message in this movie about the tragic effects of war is there at the very end as well. Overall, I thought the action in this movie was suspenseful. At least it wasn't always predictable. Lee Van Cleef is a little over the top in his acting but the other actors in the cast aren't so bad. It's worth watching.
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