Every boy's fantasy World War Two shoot-em-up!

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2002)

Rip-roaring entertainment from the master of manly novelistic adventure, Alistair MacLean. He wrote the script for this one himself, taking care to jam in every bit of slambang action, derring-do and plot implausibilities from his book, and then some.
So sit back and enjoy the snowy landscapes, explosions galore, Richard Burton's stiff upper lip contrasting perfectly with Clint Eastwood's sneer, female pulchritude in the persons of Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt, evil Nazis, double agents, ferocious gun battles, a soaring score by Ron Goodwin -- this one has it all. Producer Elliott Kastner and director Brian G. Hutton outdid themselves getting larger-than-life production value on the screen. Okay, so there's also a bit of occasional bad rear-projection, plus that old bugaboo of WWII behind-enemy-lines intrigue: Germans who speak German one moment and English the next. But we can live with that, as the plot propels us from one deadly, impossible fix to the next at breakneck speed.
One of the great movie matinée experiences of my brothers' and my boyhood, it looks better than ever on DVD.