Instant Favorite.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A famous film signed by J. Lee Thompson, with many great names. I've seen it many times. When I was a teenager I liked it. Watched once again in May 2018, I did not like it so much, it is too slow, too long, too monotonous, too exaggerated. It's nice to see Anthony Quinn again, back to Greece, being Greek again. As for the "great" Gregory Peck, as far as I'm concerned, like Clint Eastwood, he was just another American with a big carrot in his ass, always.

A British team are tasked with entering occupied Greece and destroying a large gun tower on the island of Navarone. With the gun tower being heavily guarded by the Nazis, the team have to use their ingenuity to outfox the Germans.The Guns Of Navarone is a good story and to be fair it had enough going for it to hold my interest, but unfortunately it's a film that I found to be sporadically thrilling and compelling rather than consistently compelling and thrilling.The first thing has to be addressed is the length of the film and one thing I really don't like is a film that spends an awful long time just setting up the plot - sometimes this can work with complex plots that need to introduce several characters or films that involve interwoven stories, but where the plot is rather linear such as it is in The Guns Of Navarone I would have much preferred it if we'd have got to the crux of the plot much sooner (some of the earlier scenes felt rather redundant and didn't seem to do much to drive the narrative forward). Although the slightly plodding pace is more of a problem in the first half sadly examples of it are dotted throughout the film - director J Lee Thompson seems to use a lot of long takes which admittedly look good, but inevitably just add unnecessary length to the picture.The cast are a key to make this work and although David Niven has top billing (according to IMDb) it is very much Gregory Peck who is the lead actor here and he does a great job giving a rather calm and understated performance as the 'voice of authority'. David Niven is also excellent in what I would class as a 'supporting role' in this film.Still as I've mentioned it has enough about it to make it worth watching - although J Lee Thompson seems to have tried to turn this into some kind of epic he does mostly keep the story on track and it does slowly manifest itself into an intriguing battle of wits. It's certainly worth a look and probably would have been even better if the running time would have been trimmed slightly.

Real Art of making a film is on display in this one. The war fiction novel by Allistair MacLean proved to be a very great source to fashion a first quality script. The filmmakers then opened the film by simulating an actual World War 2 Documentary about Navarone in black and white which gives the opening such a feel of reality that a viewer would have to know this is fiction in order to realize it is not a documentary about the war.The cast for this could not be crafted any better. Gregory Peck is very good here. This might be David Niven's best film role and this is one of the very few times Anthony Quinn and Anthony Quayle are together in one movie. Both of them did a lot of solid films but rarely are they any better than in this one. James Darren, later to become a teen idol during the 1960's is here. Irene Papas has an important role along with Gia Scala though the ladies are not the main characters. Gia is important because her being Greek in a story set in Greece helps get the feel of reality.This film was important because not only was there sequels launched by it, but the concept of this film was used in several other films as well in the 1960's. Never were any done better than this one here. This one with a mission that seems impossible, yet so real in it's goal to secure the straight by the island of Navarone so that many ships in the royal navy are not sunk by these huge guns feels right in every aspect to a first time viewer.This movie does present the Nazi's as a very intelligent and capable foe. Their spy network seems to be ahead of the team every step of the way until very late in the movie. There i a very credible storm sequence that nearly derails the mission which is sort of a mini event that later would be expanded into the disaster type films of the late 1960's and beyond. This film has everything you would expect in a real story. Nothing is made too easy for accomplishing this mission for the team. Later films trying to duplicate this effort come close but never quit achieve the quality of this film.J. Lee Thompson, the director would go on to direct Cape Fear, the now classic film with Peck and Robert Mitchum the very next year is at the height of his career as these 2 films are his best efforts by far. Because these 2 films are his best, he is not as well remembered as a director as other ones because he only really has thee 2 films as crown jewels in his career. What a jewel this one is. After doing these 2 films back to back, no others would quite reach this one.The mountain blasting sequence in this one is one of the better special effects sequences of war films. The story and the cast plus the locations used pull the viewer into this solid film.

...while my favourite anti-war film is the original All Quiet On The Western Front. I don't know enough about either World War 2 or the probable merits of seeing this motion picture in all it's original glory at a big cinema sneeringly recommended by a previous commenter, all I know for sure it's a damn fine film to watch on the TV at home. Which without intending to be snooty I've done many times over the decades; it's just some people actually prefer concentrating on a smaller screen with no one munching popcorn in their ear.An Allied mission comprising of six big strong men sets out to destroy the gargantuan Nazi guns entrenched in the cliffs at Navarone in Greece. This mission is to be by sea, mountain and land and faces many trials and tribulations along the way caused by the Nazis and internal frictions. The moral relativist dilemmas come thick and fast and are what help make this a special war film – at the other end of the decade there was no such moralising in Where Eagles Dare. Examples: whether or not to kill or kill to order; the possibility of using up a man's life to further your own ends or orders; instead of holding doors open for them should men shoot women; how tough it is to make decisions which effect others; why the two not so intelligent working class men were doomed to die and the three intelligent upper class officers destined to survive; what bloody good does any of it do anyway; and surprisingly more. On the evidence presented it's even possible to debate whether the Nazis really did have a shocking taste in undies. My favourite bit is David Niven's dramatic unmasking of the traitor and what he expects from his commanding officer Gregory Peck in resolution – everyone's emotions are expertly played with, including ours.There's (generally) great acting, production and story – the special effects are sometimes a disappointment but aren't a problem as never central to the plot. It's doesn't have to be a true story or totally perfect in all departments, just suspend belief for 150 minutes and it's fantastic entertainment: If War is Hell you probably wouldn't guess it from this film, watch it to decide.