big X marks the spot

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2005)

This is a great film - make no mistake. But I would like to make a comment about Attenborough. Stevie Q's in-the-end futile bike ride is now part of cinema legend and become iconic, and he sure looks good. However, for me the honours have to go to Richard Attenborough as Sq. Ldr. Bartlett or 'Big X'. I'm going to push the boat out here and say it's his 'iconic' moment on film - even apart from 'Pinky' in 'Brighton Rock'. Attenborough is the driving force of the story. All the other characters are as wooden as the huts (hey, I know it's not Shakespeare) but it's through him that we are reminded that there is a war going on and it's not pretty. We are introduced to all the other various prisoners as a hotchpotch of the usual suspects (so to speak) but before Attenborough even says anything we immediately realise the brutality of the moment..his relief when the Gestapo leave the room is palpable! His conversation with the Senior B.O. is frighteningly stark; he is reminded that for the present the Luftwaffe control Germany's POW camps - not the Gestapo or SS. Big X looks mortified; to him there is no distinction, "we're fighting the bloody lot". It's this refusal on Bartletts part not to forget the reasons for fighting (and in doing so reminding the viewer) that keeps the rest of the film from falling into a litany of comic book capers.
And where did Stevie Q's 'Hiltz' ever get it into his brain there was a blind spot in the wire? Did he labour under the belief that Luftwaffe personnel were drafted from the congenitally short-sighted, or did he have inside information that Mr. Magoo's German cousin was on duty in the watchtower that morning?