Customer Reviews

March or Die

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It is difficult to say which of Gene Hackman's movies is "best", but this little known movie is certainly among them.

The complete story is actually very good. I saw the uncut version one time, which enhances the characters and explains the storyline more fully, certainly in the case of Hackman's character and several of the other major characters. There is much more to Hackman's character than the cut version shows, which makes him, and the movie, exceedingly more interesting. This US release, unfortunately, is the cut down version, which has, of course cut out some of the most important aspects of the story.

I would like to see the uncut version, which I believe is the European release, made and re-released for American audiences. In total, it is a great adventure movie and certainly a great view of La Legion Etrangere in the 1920s.

Great foreign legion movie with Gene Hackman in the lead role. Great supporting cast to include, Ian Holm, Max von Sydow, and Catherine Denuve. Filmed at the height of his career (he's still there)on location with no studio shots. Gary Cooper's Beau Geste and this film are the best foreign legion films made!
It would be nice if hollywood would reissue this film so we would not have to buy foreign copies because it is not available otherwise. You can find a copy of "Bride of Chucky" which is disgusting but not of a classic like this. In any case, I would highly recommend this film to all Hackman fans.

A fantastic DVD of a fantastic movie. Image quality perfect and unedited. Don't buy the crummy Domino Principle/March or Die double feature. The film there is bad quality and very very edited.

The original, uncut European version of March or Die, about the Foreign Legion in North Africa, was a damned good movie, with Genre Hackman, as always, portraying his character, a battle-weary veteran of WW I, to the full. The US version, the only version that seems to be available currently, is pathetic by comparison as it has been cut to pieces. It does not show the character detail of the original cut, losing much of the storyline and, therefore, the point of the story and why the characters are where they are at that given time and place.

The original cut was an excelently shot period movie, with time and place well portrayed. The cast, in addition to Hackman, includes Terence Hill, Max von Sydow, Catherine Deneuve, and Ian Holm.

For those who enjoy a good adventure, this is it. Those who enjoy stories of the military, specifically the Legion with few punches pulled, this is it. Also, romance is not forgotten, as it would not be a Legion movie without it. There is also mystery and intrigue.

Strong acting, good story, excelently filmed - in the original, European, version. The US version is not worth the bother.

This movie has been edited from it's original release. Also the film quality can only be considered poor or average at best.

The Foreign Legion has inspired a variety of films from comedies as "Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion" (1950) thru epic classics as "Beau Geste" (1939) till more recent action ones as "Legionnaire" (1998).
"March or Die" (1977) is a good film on the subject with many ingredients as to produce an outstanding product, yet the viewer ends with the impression that something is missing to insufflate a real epic spirit.
I have only seen this VHS version and some other reviews imply there is a more complete version in existence and that may be the reason to this.
However it wasn't a box office success either, so there is some flaw that I can't define exactly.

Arguably the only weak link may be director Dick Richards who hasn't delivered any remarkable film. He was supposed to direct great success "Tootsie" (1982) but for reasons unknown to me he was replaced by Sydney Pollack and relegated only to produce that movie.
Every other category is headed by well known specialists that had made first class products.
In charge of cinematography is exquisite John Alcott, who usually worked with Stanley Kubrick as in "Barry Lyndon" (1975) and "The Shining" (1980). Desert images are beautiful and battle scenes very neatly photographed.
Musical score is composed by famed Maurice Jarre author of remarkable and awarded scores as "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Dr. Zhivago" (1965), "A Passage to India" (1984) and "Ghost" (1990) amongst more than 170 other.
First class actress and actors: Catherine Deneuve, Gene Hackman, Max von Sydow, Terence Hill and Ian Holm. Even if none of them deliver their best, they are more talented than average.

The story is two pronged as it follows Maj. William Sherman Foster persecuted by dreadful memories of WWI and legionnaire Marco Seagraine who entered the Legion escaping jail.
Confronting them is historical character Abd el-Krim, in a fictitious episode, who is in search of something symbolic and transcendent that helps him to unite and launch Riff's tribes into revolt.
Finally there is a group of archeologists that in the name of science, will try to unearth some relics considered sacred by the tribesmen, no matter the cost.
All this elements will blend to constitute an interesting movie crowned by an epic battle filmed marvelously.

It is a good action film deserving to be seen!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

March or Die was one of a number of massive box-office disasters that nearly brought Columbia to its knees until CE3K rescued it from the brink. On the surface it belongs alongside the trilogy of mid-70s adventure films that Sean Connery made for the studio, with Gene Hackman's embittered Foreign Legionnaire reluctantly leading his surviving men to protect Max Von Sydow's archaeological dig. It's a perfectly workable premise for an adventure but it never really works. It's a schizophrenic film at best, and not just because of the usual international co-production vagaries: Gene Hackman is starring in a bleak, revisionist drama while Terence Hill is starring in an old-fashioned swashbuckler, and despite John Alcott's strikingly subdued photography neither strand quite works - not enough panache or too much depending on whose turn it is in the spotlight. The final (and only) battle scene is a particularly odd affair, with Hackman's character behaving very oddly indeed, depriving the audience of the expected climax in a way that seems more bizarre and just plain wrong than innovative. Heavy pre-release cutting probably didn't help (the original US TV broadcast, which many wrongly assume was given a theatrical release in Europe, included a number of deleted sequences, including an additional battle scene), but this is more an interesting failure than a successful reinvention of a subgenre it all but killed off for good. It certainly managed to kill of director Dick Richards' career.

The UK DVD is a decent fullframe transfer of the same theatrical version released both in the US and Europe with no loss of picture area: for the original 1.85:1 widescreen version you need to track down the Australian DVD. There are no extras on either issue: a shame, as it would have been interesting to see the deleted scenes, and the film's trailer was very good.

Don't believe anything written by AmazonPro, the second review is a bald face lie. This DVD has all the earmarks of a chinese pirated copy. It is a poor direct from VHS copy. Thier so-called "digital remastering" is nothing more than poor color saturation during the lousy transfer. The picture quality is fuzzy and the colors tend to the orange side. Take a close look at the cover photo and that is EXACTLY what the movie colors look like. The poor quality of the DVD case photos should have been enough to clue me in, but I wanted to see the movie, so I bit and wasted the money. I am firmly convinced these are pirated copies. So avoid this merchandise unless you like throwing you money away.

The movie as a bundle of time worn cliches' that we have seen in god knows how many war movies. From the lover prostituting herself to save a lover who doesn't want to be saved, to the hard but loved by his men commander, the suicide of the soft recruit who can't hack it, to the evil but chivalrous enemy to the rousing last stand, to the once rebellious recruit, now seasoned veteran standing before new inductees, filling his dead commanders boots, quoting the dead commander's now famous lines, and getting knowing nods from his veteran brothers and survivors at arms. The cliches just keep on coming. The plot will have you shaking your head in disbelief or rolling on the floor with laughter.

Yes I am a Hackman fan, but Terrance Hill gives the same performance he gave in every spagehtti western he ever starred in since My Name is Nobody.
Pretty blue eyes and a cleft chin are two attributes onto which only a shaky career can be built. This movie is an embarassing mess that I am sure Gene Hackman, Max von Sydow and Katherine Denueve and other respectable actors in it would just as soon forget. I have to think that it was directed by a Frenchman, who had never watched a hollywood war movie in his life, and thought all these cliches were new stuff. No self respecting director would have knowingly stuffed so many into 100 odd minutes.

The poster says "The Foreign Legion - they were the greatest fighting force of all time and they obeyed but one command - `March or Die'". That'll give you the basic idea of this 1977 film produced by block buster makers Jerry Bruckheimer and Sir Lew Grade and starring an international cast from the U.S. (Gene Hackman), France (Catherine Deneuve), Italy (Terrence Hill), England (Ian Holms) and Sweden (Max van Sydow).

Time: After the Great War. Place: Morocco.

Gene Hackman (1930) plays a Major haunted by memories of the Great War in which he lost all but 200 of his 8000 man Battalion, and reluctant to act as the guard for an expedition which will likely result in armed opposition from the locals. Hackman is a two time Oscar winner ("Unforgiven" and "The French Connection") and earned 3 more nominations ("Mississippi Burning", "I Never Sang for my Father", "Bonnie and Clyde"). A veteran of nearly 100 films in a career that started in 1961, personally I liked him best as the blind man in "Young Frankenstein" (1974).

Beautiful Catherine Deneuve (1943) was nominated for the French "Oscar" 10 times, winning twice, for "Indochine" (1992) and "The Last Metro" (1980). Some of her most memorable roles have been in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964), "Repulsion" (1965) and "8 Women", but I enjoyed her best in "The Hunger" (1983). Deneuve plays the film's love interest, but it's hard to get too excited as Deneuve is so seriously depressed throughout the film.

Terence Hill (1939) is best known for his 1970s westerns like "My Name is Trinity", "My Name is Nobody", and "Trinity is Still My Name". Hill plays a Legionnaire who smiles no matter what happens.

Ian Holms (1931) plays an Arab leader who is opposed to an expedition to unearth a 3000 year old lost city... Holms appeared in more than 100 films, although he's probably best known today for his role as Bilbo Baggins. He was nominated for an Oscar for his role as the coach in "Chariots of Fire" (1981), and received 6 BAFTA nominations, winning twice ("Chariots of Fire" and "The Bofors Gun"). He's probably most famous as Bilbo Baggins in the "Lord of the Rings" films, but I think his performance in "Greystoke" is his best. He gives one of the few adequate performances in this film.

Max von Sydow (1929) is best known for his outstanding work with Ingmar Bergman in classics like "The Seventh Seal" (1957), "Wild Strawberries" (1957), "The Magician" (1958), "The Virgin Spring" (1960), and "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961). He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work in "Hawaii" (1966) and "The Exorcist" (1973), and an Oscar for "Pelle the Conqueror" (1987). Max plays an archeologist willing to risk the Legionnaire lives to investigate the hidden city.

Writer, producer and director Dick Richards (1936) was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA as producer for "Tootsie" (1982), the only other film he produced. As a director he made only 7 films including "Farewell My Lovely" (1975) and "The Culpepper Cattle Co." (1972).

Executive Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (1945) is the powerhouse behind so many mega hits in film and TV it's impossible to list them all. Here's a list of my top 10 - "CSI" (2000-2011), "Cold Case" (2003-10), "Without a Trace" (2002-9), "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003), "Black Hawk Down" (2001), Armageddon" (1998), "The Rock" (1996), "Bad Boys" (1995), and "Crimson Tide" (1995).

FWIW - Bruckheimer's first 4 films as an associate producer/producer was with Dick Richards on "Culpepper Cattle Co." (1972), "Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins" (1975), "Farewell My Lovely" (1975), and this film.

The beautiful photography is by John Alcott, the Oscar winning photographer of "Barry Lyndon" (1975), one of the dullest but most beautifully filmed movies of all time. Alcott's credits also include "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), "The Shining" (1980), and "No Way Out" (1987).

The French Foreign Legion has been covered in dozens of films, the most famous of which is "Beau Geste" that was filmed a half dozen times and featured Ronald Coleman (1926) and Gary Cooper (1939) among others. Other notable films include "Morocco" (1930) with Gary Cooper, Adolph Menjou, and Marlene Dietrich, "Under Two Flags" (1936) with Ronald Coleman, Victor McLaglen, and Claudette Colbert, and Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Legionnaire" (1998). Of course we can't forget the Abbott and Costello 1950 comedy and the "Carry On" satire in 1967. Of this entire group, my personal favorite is the 1939 "Beau Geste".

The big block busters in 1977 were "Star Wars", "Close Encounters", "The Rescuers", "Saturday Night Fever", and "The Goodbye Girl". "Annie Hall" picked up 3 Oscars (Picture, Director, Actress) and "Julia" picked up two (Supporting Actor, Actress). Other notable films that year were "Equus", "Eraserhead", and "New York. New York", and "Smokey and the Bandit".

The film was a box office disappointment, with a budget of $9 million and a gross of only $1 million. The NY Times' Janet Maslin disliked the "peculiarly listless all-star cast" and called the movie "extraordinarily wooden" and "static". In fact, I would go a bit further and say the film is downright depressing from the very first scene.

As with most films of this nature, the lead up is to a climactic scene in which a small bunch of soldiers is attacked by a much larger force (e.g., "Zulu", "The Alamo", "Lost Patrol", "The Spartans", "The Wild Bunch"). All things considered, this is probably one of the poorest versions of that type of scene.

The film is not without merits. The photography is excellent, and the machinations inside the Foreign Legion are certainly interesting. The sly homage to Marlene Dietrich brought a smile to my face.

The Foreign Legion has inspired a variety of films from comedies as "Abbott & Costello in the Foreign Legion" (1950) thru epic classics as "Beau Geste" (1939) till more recent action ones as "Legionnaire" (1998).
"March or Die" (1977) is a good film on the subject with many ingredients as to produce an outstanding product, yet the viewer ends with the impression that something is missing to insufflate a real epic spirit.
I have only seen this VHS version and some other reviews imply there is a more complete version in existence and that may be the reason to this.
However it wasn't a box office success either, so there is some flaw that I can't define exactly.

Arguably the only weak link may be director Dick Richards who hasn't delivered any remarkable film. He was supposed to direct great success "Tootsie" (1982) but for reasons unknown to me he was replaced by Sydney Pollack and relegated only to produce that movie.
Every other category is headed by well known specialists that had made first class products.
In charge of cinematography is exquisite John Alcott, who usually worked with Stanley Kubrick as in "Barry Lyndon" (1975) and "The Shining" (1980). Desert images are beautiful and battle scenes very neatly photographed.
Musical score is composed by famed Maurice Jarre author of remarkable and awarded scores as "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Dr. Zhivago" (1965), "A Passage to India" (1984) and "Ghost" (1990) amongst more than 170 other.
First class actress and actors: Catherine Deneuve, Gene Hackman, Max von Sydow, Terence Hill and Ian Holm. Even if none of them deliver their best, they are more talented than average.

The story is two pronged as it follows Maj. William Sherman Foster persecuted by dreadful memories of WWI and legionnaire Marco Seagraine who entered the Legion escaping jail.
Confronting them is historical character Abd el-Krim, in a fictitious episode, who is in search of something symbolic and transcendent that helps him to unite and launch Riff's tribes into revolt.
Finally there is a group of archeologists that in the name of science, will try to unearth some relics considered sacred by the tribesmen, no matter the cost.
All this elements will blend to constitute an interesting movie crowned by an epic battle filmed marvelously.

It is a good action film deserving to be seen!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.