Leave it to director Andrew McLaglen...
... to take a great story, a talented team with a star-studded cast and turn it into a dog's breakfast of a film.
This one man has directed so much talent -- Richard Burton, Maurice Chevalier, James Coburn, Brian Keith, Roger Moore, Maureen O'Hara, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, John Vernon, John Wayne, and many others -- and turned out a body of work that is easily forgettable, and at best, forgotten.
This film is no exception. It tells the true story of a unique event in WWII. It is set in an exotic location. The producer hires two of the all-time great actors on both sides of "the pond" -- Greg Peck and David Niven. Throw in the reigning 007, Roger Moore, and a solid cast of British regulars, and you get a blockbuster, right? Not with McLaglen at the helm. Here you get a tedious, overly-complicated film that takes two hours to tell a 30-minute story, in a humdrum style.
This director had the unique ability to take any actor and make him look mediocre. It amazes when you think how much talent he was given, and how little he did with it. He must have made money for his producers... how else could he have directed so many films? Yet these films have less artistic value than your average B-movie with an unknown cast.
Perhaps McLaglen is typical of Hollywood's bad-old days between the fall of the studio system in the 1950s and the visionary directors of the 1970s who brought new life to an industry that could not come to terms with television?
McLaglen's films are very much like formulaic "made-for-television" movies in that they flow from requisite bits of business between obligatory bits of action without much care or worry about quality, continuity, believability, style or any other element that make a film memorable.
This is a film that really doesn't need a DVD release, though will no doubt get one (along with the Wild Geese, Ffolkes, Chisum, Shenandoah, Bandolero, and the other McLaglen films that may have been good or great with inspired direction, but make solid average marks with McLaglen in charge.) Some of these scripts surround interesting ideas: the hijack of an oil rig or the Lincoln County Wars. I wish he did more with them.
If ever there was a part of the Hollywood inventory that deserves a remake, it's these films of Andrew McLaglen. Perhaps some smart young producer will tap into this goldmine?