Best movie of this year hands down!

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

"The prison camp was full of British officers who had sworn to die - rather than be captured".So the late - lamented Mr Milligan gently guyed the British P.O.W. film genre which by 1959 was beginning to run out of steam.Let's face it,blokes digging tunnels,comic opera "funny" or sadistic guards,walking around with trousers filled with dirt from the tunnel and doing endless calisthenics in flapping gym shorts can only have a limited appeal to even uncritical English audiences. However,adding the rather louche Mr M.Wilding and nice but dim Mr P.Jones as a kind of chorus was a nice touch by Bryan Forbes in "Danger within" which is otherwise merely competent with all concerned acting within their comfort zones. I am a great admirer of Mr B.Forbes as an actor,writer and director but I don't feel he was pushing the envelope here in any other department. I once worked with a former R.A.F. aircrew who,a week after being gazetted with his DFC was shot down over the Ruhr and spent three years as a guest of our European partners.He told me 90% of the P.O.Ws simply wanted to do their time as peacefully and painlessly as possible and get home in one piece. Those that planned escapes were avoided like Ronnie Stephens the sewer rat in "Danger within",albeit for different reasons. As former officers typed away at their memoirs,that aspect of their imprisonment seems to have somehow been downgraded.

There's something about POW escape dramas, you rarely get a poor one. Firstly, unusual to see one set in an Italian camp. I'm not sure the harsh reality of POW camps were put across here, but that's not necessarily what the movie was trying to do. What it does have is an interesting script that moves along at a healthy pace. this is helped by a top notch cast who are all utterly believable. There are definite comedy moments but they don't detract at all from the action. This film was over in what seemed like no time & I would watch it again in a heartbeat. Two minor quibbles. I thought the informant was revealed a shade too early for me and I never felt that his motivation was sufficiently explored. Great, Boys own stuff.

Although similar but not as good as Stalag 17, this is one of the best British POW movies. The script is fast paced, the cast is excellent, the acting is top draw , without hamming it up. And like Stalag 17 there is a traitor in the camp. The film blends drama with a good whodunit, and throw in the Camp's production of Hamlet as a ploy to enable a mass escape is an absolute joy. Dennis Price, Bernard Lee,Richard Todd, Peter Arne and a who's who of British actor's make this such an enjoyable film. Richard Attenborough's performance as always is superb. I rate this film and recommend it to anyone who enjoys War-Drama movies. Danger Within is being shown on Channel Four on Tuesday afternoon 12th of July, please watch it, if i had a VCR i would record it!. This film deserves a quality DVD release in it's original aspect ratio, so whoever own's the rights please do something about it.

A rare bright spot in a benighted genre, this British POW drama avoids familiarity not only by avoiding stiff upper lip and grey morality in favour of wit, tension and Hollywood stereotype, but also by a clever use of the metaphors of theatre. Most British war films parade their stifling docudrama-style 'realism'; this is often an excuse for imaginative paucity. 'Danger Within' uses the idea of play to question some of the received myths about the British Second World War.Part of the novelty lies in its North Italian setting - we're so used to nefarious Nazis and brutal Japanese. Not that it makes much difference - the main villain, Capitano Benucci, is a Nazi-trained sadist, who imagines he's suavity incarnate with his sophisticated cigars, laidback walk, time goatie, and clipped, ironical speech. But the blanching sun makes a nice change, giving a parched, sandy feel, and the notorious stereotype of Italian incompetence makes the various plot points believable.What makes this narrative absorbing is not the usual will-they-or-won't-they escape plot, but a kind of detective story. No matter how ingenious the efforts of the escape committee - and there is a brilliant one here involving sewers, light-switches, misplaced cigarettes and rugby posts- there is always the same welcoming committee of armed fascists ready to mow them down. It's clear there's an informer, but who?The obvious culprit is a shifty-looking Greek. This is the film's first daring piece of iconoclasm. There is a lot of anti-Italian racism throughout, but that can be attributed to understandable wartime emotionalism, where contempt for what Fascism stands for is expressed in xenophobia. But the Greek's only obvious credentials for being an informer is the fact of being a Greek, a little small, sweaty, oily, you know, naturally sneaky. When his name is called at roll-call, a wit hurls a dead rat at the officer; we remember Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda that used similar analogies.This is a strangely unideological war these men are fighting - there is no rhetoric about liberty and democracy; this is a prison film in which the criminals, all professionals, want to escape. Everything centres on the job in hand, with loyalty vouchsafed for anyone who agrees. This lack of sentimentality is refreshing an a genre stuffed with secular piety.Even better is the working of the theatrical metaphors. The brilliant opening scene features a prisoner disguised as the commandant - their fatal meeting creates a mirror effect that echoes in the following narrative about, not only duplicity, but also people who don't seem to be what they are, including old fops who turn out to be very brave men. Of course, this is a situation where the Law are murderous criminals, and the prisoners are democratic saviours, ambiguous enough in itself. It creates a world where you don't know who to trust, especially dangerous in a situation where loyalty and trust need to be givens. This idea of acting and pretending (extending to the Capitano) culminates in the attempted escape during 'Hamlet', with the immortal Dennis Price in a mop wig as the Prince. It's a shame they couldn't have picked a more apposite play - King Lear, perhaps? - or worked it in better, with a play-within-a-play scene, for instance, to reveal the murderer. But that would have been silly, contrived, arty, and no British war film would ever be that. Michael Wilding is a bizarre sight in this testosterone heavy atmosphere; even more surprising is how excellent he is with his old queen patter and reserves of steel.