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

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

During World War II, several oddly assorted military experts are teamed in a mission to raid and destroy a bridge vital to enemy strategy.An odd occurrence in making the film: cinematographer Christopher Challis recalled that the film was originally considered to be filmed in Pakistan until someone realized that Pakistanis did not resemble Yugoslavians or Germans and the expense to make them appear as such on film would be financially prohibitive. How do you make someone look German? Anyway, this is a good war story. Not a great war story, but a good one. And it really is sold by the strong casting. Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw, obviously, but Carl Weathers is incredible. He may be best known for "Rocky", but he always commands attention when on screen.

I really like this film. It is fun to watch. It has an assortment of actors: ford, fox, shaw, Kiel, etc. . I really like Barbara Bach. She is still very attractive and her acting is fun to watch. It appears everybody is having fun in the film. The only question I have is why did Mallory switch from being an American, (peck) to being British, (shaw) ? It is a great film for a big bowl of popcorn! I only wish they would have made it a little sooner. I can understand why they didn't. Ford was unknown at the time of American graffiti. I wish they show an unedited version on TV. Luckily I have a VHS copy in my library. I was wondering if this is on DVD. I watch this movie usually on Saturday or Sunday to make it feel like going to the movies.

It actually took me a few minutes to realise that Gregory Peck and David Niven had morphed into Robert Shaw and Edward Fox for this real-time follow-up to the 1961 hit war- movie "The Guns Of Navarone". That was almost as bizarre as the producers handily dropping the "Navarone" name into the title trying to catch a wave from 17 years ago in a film which has nothing to do with the earlier location.Once you get past that and accept that Harrison Ford has to be the youngest US Army colonel ever conscripted this is an enjoyable old-fashioned war movie although it does seem as if it belongs to another era of movie-making completely. Thus we get the usual Alistair MacLean ingredients of reluctant male-bonding, another traitor in the midst, for no apparent reason at all, a beautiful woman in a central part and of course, a big destructive finish.Shame that the would-be blockbuster finish is so obviously based on model-work but I guess SFX at the times had still to leap to the C-Gen stage. The characterisation is pretty much as you'd expect with the Germans portrayed as stupid and heartless, their partisan collaborators as heartless and stupid, with all the brains, courage and teamwork coming from Mallory and his cell. I could however have done without the racial baiting of Carl Weathers' black maverick soldier, quite unnecessary and unforgivable in a film made in the late 70's.The acting is as solid and stolid as you'd expect, Shaw and Fox demonstrating a stiff upper lip and Ford trademarking American moxy as they all start off distrusting each other but of course wind up as bonded-by-fire buddies by the end.It's fair to say I think that MacLean's writing and movie direction of this style was looking very clichéd and anachronistic this far down the line. That said, I'm a pretty old-fashioned type of guy and even though I found the characters stereotyped and the plotting unoriginal, I still got some sort of enjoyment from watching it.

'Force 10 From Navarone'; except that it has nothing to do with Navarone and contains none of the original stars.A youthful Harrison Ford leads a reasonable cast featuring an embittered Negro and a couple of British characters, inevitably represented as eccentric - this time to the point of being camp. The latter is such a tiresome Hollywood pose that it might serve to explain why they always seem intent on demonstrating how America actually won the war. The British just saw it as a jolly game.This movie so blatantly trades upon the original 1960's classic that 'rip-off' is almost an understatement. But it's not the only one. We had the pukerific 'Mosquito Squadron' composed largely of out-takes from '633 Squadron' and 'The Dambusters', not to mention 'Return From The River Kwai', which had nothing to do with the River Kwai', but which - like this crap - simply traded on the name.If this movie had been simply called 'Force 10', it would have drawn the kind of indifferent response it deserved; but by grafting on 'From Navarone', it probably got twice as many bums on seats at its release.Disengaged from its pretensions; there is the substance of a decent wartime thriller here. The cast, plot, and dramatic interludes are all formulaic, but that doesn't necessarily mean dull. There's some interesting location stuff - especially within the bowels of the dam - which look well thought-out and convincing. It's just that the directorial pacing is so pedestrian, things seem to be happening at almost half-speed. That, plus the mediocre script and uninvolving characters, reduce it to a very ordinary set-piece movie. I'd like to say 'thriller', but it was just too slow. I've seen sharper documentaries. A good 30mins could have been shaved off without detriment.Worth a first watch if you haven't seen it, but not recommended; and certainly not collectible. Five to six stars is about right.