Purely Joyful Movie!

Great Film overall

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It takes some time before the action gets going in this film, but when it starts it never ceases to accelerate in intrigue, suspension and drama. Annemarie Duringer is prominetly leading the film by her very suave and susceptible character, most amiable but with an abyss of hidden agenda. Nigel Patrick is perfect as usual, almost too perfect, while Jeffrey Hunter is a bit of an outsider in this game, can't really handle his business nor himself, and he has to pay for it. It's very dark and almost claustrophobic in the insistency on scenes in labyrinthine insides, and only rarely you go out into dark streets för some following or spying or bullets. The title "Count Five and Die" gives away the whole drama - as a spy sent out on a mission you are given a cyanide capsule in case you get caught, and when you swallow it you count to five and die. It's very easy but not really and actually rather complicated, as you don't always reach that capsule in time...It reminds very much of Anthony Asquith's "Orders to Kill" a few years earlier, it's the same kind of problems of innocence and the wrong people getting caught up in the wrong game, and above all the doom of destiny is there hanging around more people than anyone bargained for.

I rated this movie with 6/10 which agreed with the communal IMDb.com rating when I checked.The title refers to how long it takes to die for a person who is caught spying after they have taken a cyanide suicide capsule.So we are in the realm of WW11 in 1944 when the allies had to trick the Germans into thinking the invasion would occur in Holland so that they kept important divisions tied up there.Nigel Patrick plays the British major and Jeffrey Hunter plays the American captain whose task is to sell this fiction to the Germans.In the mix comes AnneMarie Duringer, who being Swiss born had a believable accent and who plays a Dutch agent transported to London.Is she what she seems?I must say that spy movies set in war time in this country (e.g."Night Train to Munich 1940) , seem to show that our country was over populated by Nazi agents.In fact very few German agents could survive for long in the paranoid state we lived under when any one that appeared different would attract suspicion from the public.I found the love scene between Jeffrey Hunter and Annemarie Duringer very contrived and unconvincing.Nigel Patrick was adequate.The reality of deceiving the Germans about when and where the invasion would happen was almost an industry with many more participants from the allies than this film suggested.

This film may be based on fact but it is a fiction.Operation Fortitude was divided into 2 parts.The Germans were to be fooled into thinking that there were invasions planned for Norway and Calais and that the invasion in Normandy was just a diversion.There was no diversion planned for Holland.The local resistance were not thought reliable and intelligence from them was disregarded which was a contributory factor to the disaster at Arnhem.Additionally there were no German agents in the UK.they had all been turned.So most of the plot of this film does not bear up under scrutiny.Alas it is a rather slow moving film with a rather predictable love plot.Nigel Patrick does what he can but until the end this is rather a dull film.

I don't believe that this film is based on real events, as there is no evidence of it. However, it is made to make us think that's the case. British filmmakers were always so good with this type of movie.Regardless, it's a well-made, believable tale, with good acting, writing, and direction.My only complaint is that the ending leaves us wondering what happened to Jeffrey Hunter's character. Does he survive being shot? Does he get an award for his actions? Inquiring minds need to know. Endings like this one are so frustrating.Would love to see a widescreen DVD release of this film one day. It deserves a release.