Whose gold was it in the first place?

Rating: Null/10 (4 October 2002)

Reading all the great comments on this page, a few things comes to mind. A number of people mention greed as one of the main themes in this film. The great thing about greed is that you don't worry about who the original(or rightful)owner was of the things that you've obtained. In this case nobody wonders where the Germans got the gold from. It probably wasn't theirs in the first place as they were retreating from France in this stage of WWII and looted everything worth taking back with them to Germany. So the gold probably belonged to the French. The great thing about this film is that you identify so instantly with the good guys (because the director and the actors make you believe that they are)that you might think "If we don't steel the gold from the bad guys, it will be lost for the original owners anyway". Another extraordinary thing about this film is the lack of special effects or constructed scenery. Even in Band of Brothers you see the same Gate appear a number of times in different villages to cut the costs, but here a complete and real Yugoslav village is wrecked and blown up for a movie. And brought some badly wanted hard currency into the socialists wallets. The Yugoslavs couldn't have foreseen that half their country would look like this almost thirty years later.
Every time I watch this movie I more appreciate it. Its 'over the top story' is well documented in the comments here but the attention to detail is amazing as well. For instance in the scene before the one in which our bunch of heroes is shot up by their own planes, you hear the reconnaissance plane spotting them, but you never get to see it. Just the sound adds to the tension. I could go on about this but find out for yourself again and again, on a wide screen TV watching the DVD, in order to enjoy the great "western" scene to the most.