Not all things improve with age.

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2013)

I was actually extremely eager to watch this title, and rightly so. I mean : Billy Wilder, Willam Holden even Peter Graves. It's a WWII movie which is a particular favourite of mine to boot.
So Imagine my disappointment when this sometimes comedy, sometimes drama, mostly mystery unfolded on my screen over the course of 2 hours. What a sham! The poor directing, the over acting, the bad jokes and the rubbish story.
The story actually has some promise, were it to have received the right treatment. Surely the two largest problems I had with the movie is firstly the poorly timed, mostly unwelcome and often unwanted comic relief. The result is a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be : serious or silly. Secondly is the frankly abysmal mistreatment of the subject matter. This stems either from willful ignorance or shameful disregard. I'm not sure which is worse, especially considering that the movie was made less than a decade after the war in question had ended.
To be fair perhaps it is just a case of this movie not ageing gracefully at all. But for me this one is a confirmed miss at 4 out of 10. Go and see "The Great Escape" instead.