Tremendous potential

Rating: 2/10 (25 July 2006)

I'm a big William Holden fan, one of the only originals to come out of that era and to me, the link between Hollywood's golden age and modern cinema.
Unfortunately there seem to be two movies at play here and alongside the hard reality, blended with the SUBTLE comedy of William Holden and some of the other characters, there come some of the other prisoners to contend with.
The two scraggly characters added for comic relief do their best to undermine attempts for the viewer to be impressed by a serious film, and unfortunately with me, they succeeded. Their scenes in the mud and drooling over the egg like Marty Feldman reminded me of Young Frankenstein, only Mel Brooks would never have jammed two such glaringly unsuited styles together in such a ham-fisted manner.
I was ready to turn off the film again when the prisoner with the grover-like voice came in to parrot orders and attention a short while later.
While the suspense mounted and the film improved, moments like those and the amiable relationship between the prisoners of the featured barrack and their German babysitter for lack of a more adequate term (though I doubt one exists) stuck in my mind and prevented me from enjoying what seemed like a very well crafted story. I can see how it survived as a play, some of the dialogue is sparing and to the point. I doubt very much that theatre audiences would have tolerated the two near-imbeciles that Hollywood seemed to think were the missing ingredient for transition to film. But then again, I found the same character on everyone loves Raymond to be insulting to me as a viewer because I'm no longer 6 years old, but many didn't seem to mind it. Perhaps I am stuck longing for a perfect movie and this had a few ingredients to take it to that level, and many stumbling blocks to ensure it never reached that point.
Billy has done solid drama and comedy, but I would rank this a failure, despite what were likely good intentions on his part.
Fans of Billy should check out Some like it Hot, fans of Holden should check out just about everything he's ever done, apart from this, through no fault of his own. Perhaps if he wasn't so good, I could have more readily accepted this film as more junk on the scrap pile. As it was, I was more eager to capture the spy who sold out a promising film than the one the prisoners were searching for.