Billy Wilder's Heroes

Rating: 6/10 (4 January 2011)

Billy Wilder's adaptation of a popular stage play drafted the blueprint for every subsequent World War II POW drama, and by now it's been seen in so many familiar variations that the original can't help but look a little stale. The searchlights and barbed wire, the Old World Prussian kommandant, and the elaborate escape tunnels are all here, together with the same bunch of gruff GI Joes, always cursing the krauts and moaning over dames. Who would expect a Nazi concentration camp could be such fun? The pendulum shift in tone from boyish humor to stark melodrama probably owes more to its theatrical source than to any sort of cinematic expression, but the spy-in-the-barracks plot is still effective, once the fun and games finally end. But the only member of the cast able to rise above the ranks of cardboard cutouts is William Holden, both in character and performance. As the cynical lone-wolf prisoner who bargains with the Germans for his own comfort (and draws the resentment and suspicion of his barrack mates), he single-handedly makes the film worthwhile after all this time.