Category: Men on a mission film

1917 (2019)

George MacKay is lost in the horrors of war in Sam Mendes’ one-shot 1917

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: George MacKay (Lance Corporal Will Schofield), Dean-Charles Chapman (Lance Corporal Tom Blake), Benedict Cumberbatch (Colonel Mackenzie), Colin Firth (General Erinmore), Richard Madden (Captain Blake), Andrew Scott (Lt. Leslie), Mark Strong (Captain Smith), Claire Duburcq (Lauri), Daniel Mays (Sgt Saunders), Adrian Scarborough (Major Hepburn), Jamie Parker (Lt Richards), Michael Jibson (Lt Hutton), Richard McCabe (Colonel Collins)

No film can even begin to capture the unspeakable horror of war, and those of us who have never been in the middle of it can only imagine what it must have been like for those who have. Based on the experiences of his grandfather Alfred, Sam Mendes’ World War I story tries to immerse the viewers in the experience by staging a film designed to play out in real time, in two epic takes (actually a series of very long takes seamlessly spliced together). It’s a technical accomplishment, but also a film partly dominated by the precision of its construction rather than the emotion of its telling.

One day in April 1917, two young Lance-Corporals, brave and selfless Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and more war-weary Will Schofield (George MacKay) are tasked with a desperate mission by General Erinmore (Colin Firth). The next morning, a British regiment will walk into a trap set by German forces. Blake and Schofield must take a message through no-man’s land, cancelling the regiment’s planned attack, or 1,600 men will die – including Blake’s brother who is serving with the regiment.

Mendes’ film is a triumph whenever it is in motion. The time-limited race to travel across miles of hostile land – through no-man’s land, booby-trapped abandoned trenches, hazardous open fields and ruined towns that have become battlegrounds – works a treat whenever our heroes are constantly moving forward. Drawing a strange inspiration from Lord of the Rings, with its quest structure and Schofield as a Samwise to Blake’s Bilbo, the film is compellingly completed with the over-the-shoulder, walking-alongside intimacy of the camera work that follows every step of this journey, that never pulls ahead or shows us something that the soldiers can’t see and keeps us nearly constantly (bar one stunning shot of a ruined town lit only by firelight and early dawn) at the level of the soldiers.

It’s an epic experience film, and Mendes’ camerawork and ingenuity in the shooting create the impression of a one-take film – some shots seem to travel at least a mile, through winding trenches, with our heroes. The effect is justified by the desire of the film to throw us into the experience of the soldiers and to create the impression that we are sharing a journey with them – and hammers home the time pressure these men are operating under as we experience everything first hand, including the only undisguised cut (and time jump) in the film. The horrors of the war are superbly shown – dead bodies, many bloated or deformed by exposure, litter the frame but tellingly bring little comment from the soldiers, demonstrating how accustomed they have become to such sights. Each frame seems covered with muddy surfaces, and sharp freezing chills. Technically it’s a marvel, and you have to admire Mendes’ ambition in even attempting such a thing.

Perhaps, though, that is one problem with the film. You are so impressed with the showy intelligence and grace of the camera movements, the ingenuity needed to keep the camera rolling through takes lasting ten minutes or more and travelling miles at a time, that move in and around confined rooms and trenches, that you at time spend as much (if not more) time marvelling at the brilliance of the film making as you do feeling the emotion of the story. While the long takes add immeasurably to the many moments of peril, dread and terror that the characters go through (helped also by Thomas Newman’s eerily unsettling score), they also become as much about admiring the technical brilliance as they are investing in the story.

Of course, the story has been boiled down to something very simple and elemental – and it avoids many clichés you half-expect from the start. But the film itself gets slightly less interesting when the relentless march forward stops, when the characters slow down or take moments of reflection. A section in the middle of the film where the action pauses around a young French woman hiding in a bombed out French town doesn’t quite work, and has a slight air of spinning plates – you could have allowed a longer break in the single take effect to take us from one event to another. In fact you wonder if a film that had more of a time jump or had been constructed around 3-4 clear long takes with time jumps might have worked better.

This is not to criticise the two actors who embody the leads. George MacKay is superb as a soldier who experiences immense suffering and torment on a journey he is less than willing to undertake from the first, and finds himself opening up his emotions and feelings more and more as the film progresses. Dean-Charles Chapman is a good match as a slightly more naïve youngster, desperate to do the right thing and selfless in his courage. These two move on a journey that essentially sees them handed over from one big-star cameo to another (something that is sometimes a little distracting, if necessary to allow these brief appearances to have character impact) with Firth, Strong, Cumberbatch, Madden et al all delivering terrific work in a few short minutes on screen.

Mendes’ direction technically is faultless, and the style chosen really adds huge and unrepeatable visual benefits, all superbly caught by Roger Deakins’ sublimely beautiful photography. At one moment a flare is fired – and we see it arch out of shot and then repair behind us in real time as the characters move forward. At another, an aerial dogfight goes from distant to alarmingly close. The countryside recedes hauntingly as a ride is hitched from a motorised regiment.

The single-take effect does make it far easier to relate in these moments to the soldiers. It works less well at smaller moments – and arguably could have been replaced by a more conventional style here to give even more impact to the rest – but its execution is perfect. Maybe too perfect, as it doesn’t always make room for the heart. Hollywood’s directors seem more and more drawn to the long take for the immersive, big-screen quality they carry – four of the last five Oscars have gone to directors whose films are almost entirely made up with them. But they create – as is sometimes the case with 1917 – something that is a product for the largest screen, immersive experiences that perhaps lack rewarding depth on later revisits.

The Dam Busters (1955)

Richard Todd leads the most famous bombing raid ever in The Dam Busters

Director: Michael Anderson

Cast: Richard Todd (Wing Commander Guy Gibson), Michael Redgrave (Barnes Wallis), Ursula Jeans (Mrs Molly Wallis), Basil Sydney (Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris), Patrick Barr (Captain Joseph “Mutt” Summers), Ernest Clark (Air Vice-Marshal Ralph Cochrane), Derek Farr (Group Captain John Whitworth)

It’s famous for its stirring theme. Those bouncing bombs. The fact that George Lucas, while still completing the special effects, spliced in the final bombing runs into his first cut of Star Wars. But where does The Dam Busters sit today as a film?

In 1942, aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) is working on a plan to take out the German dams on the Ruhr, a strike that could cripple German heavy industry. Conventional bombs can never cause enough damage, and the dams are protected from torpedo attack. So Wallis has a crazy idea – to build a bouncing bomb that will skim the top of the water, hitting the dam, with its top spin taking it down to the base of the dam for detonation. It’s a crazy idea – but it finally wins favour, with Wing Commander Guy Gibson (played by real-life World War II paratroop veteran Richard Todd) given command over an operation that promises to be risky and dangerous beyond belief.

The Dam Busters doesn’t really have much in the way of plot, being instead a rather straight-forward, even dry in places, run through of the mechanics involved in planning the operation and overcoming the engineering difficulties that stood in the way of the operation. Throw into that our heroes overcoming the various barriers and administrative hiccups put in the way by the authorities and you have a pretty standard story of British pluck and ingenuity coming up with a left-field solution that saves the day. (Though Barnes Wallis denied he faced any bureaucratic opposition like the type his fictional counterpart struggled with for most of the first forty minutes).

Of course, the film is also yet another advert for the “special nature” of the British under fire, a national sense of inherent destiny and ingenuity that has frequently done as much harm as good. Made in co-operation with the RAF, it’s also a striking tribute to the stiff-upper-lipped bravery of the RAF during the war, and the sense of sacrifice involved in flying these deadly missions.

In fact it’s striking that the film’s final few notes are not of triumph after the completion of the operation, and the destruction of the two dams, but instead the grim burden of surviving. After 56 men have been killed on the mission, Barnes Wallis regrets even coming up with the idea. The final action we see Gibson performing is walking quietly back to his office to write letters to the families. Anderson’s camera pans over the empty breakfast table, set for pilots who have not returned, and then over the abandoned belongings of the dead still left exactly where they last placed them. It’s sombre, sad and reflective – and probably the most adult moment of the film.

Because other than that, it’s a jolly charge around solving problems with a combination of Blue Peter invention, mixed with a sort of Top Gear can-do spirit. Michael Redgrave is very good as the calm, professorial, dedicated Barnes Wallis, constantly returning to the drawing board with a reserved, eccentric resignation to fix yet another prototype. The sequences showing the engineering problems being met and overcome are interesting and told with a quirky charm that makes them perhaps one of the best examples of such things made in film.

The material covering the building of the flight team is far duller by comparison, despite a vast array of soon-to-be-more-famous actors (George Baker, Nigel Stock, Robert Shaw etc.) doing their very best “the few” performances. Basically, generally watching a series of pilots working out the altitude they need to fly at in training situations is just not as interesting as watching the boffins figure out how to make the impossible possible.

The flight parts of the film really come into their own in the final act that covers the operation itself. An impressive display of special effects at the time (even if they look a bit dated now), the attack is dramatic, stirring and also costly (the film allows beats of tragedy as assorted crews are killed over the course of the mission). The attack is brilliantly constructed and shot by Michael Anderson, and very accurate to the process of the actual operation, in a way that fits in with the air of tribute that hangs around the whole film.

All this reverence to those carrying means that we overlook completely the lasting impact of the mission. “Bomber” Harris (here played with a solid gruffness by Basil Sydney) later considered the entire operation a waste of time, money and resources. Barnes Wallis begged for a follow-up to hammer home the advantage, but it never happened. The Germans soon restored their economic capability in the Ruhr. Similarly, today it’s more acknowledged the attack killed over 600 civilians and over 1000 Russian POWs working as slave labour in the Ruhr. Such things are of course ignored – the film even throws in a moment of watching German workers flee to safety from a flooding factory floor, to avoid showing any deaths on the ground.

And of course, the film is also (unluckily) infamous for the name of Gibson’s dog. I won’t mention the name, but when I say the dog is black and ask you to think of the worst possible word to use as its name and you’ve got it. It does mean the word gets bandied about a fair bit, not least when it is used as a code-word for a successful strike against the dam. Try and tune it out.

The Dam Busters is a solid and impressive piece of film-making, even if it is low on plot and more high on documentary ticking-off of facts. But it’s also reverential, a little dry and dated and avoids looking at anything involved in the mission with anything approaching a critical eye. With its unquestioning praise for “the British way”, it’s also a film that reassures those watching it that there is no need for real analysis and insight into the state of our nation, but instead that we should buckle down and trust in the divine guiding hand that always pulls Britain’s irons out of the fire.

Centurion (2010)

Michael Fassbender surveys the devastation that is Centurion

Director: Neil Marshall

Cast: Michael Fassbender (Quintus Dias), Olga Kurylenko (Etain), Dominic West (General Titus Flavius Virilus), Liam Cunningham (Brick), David Morrissey (Bothos), JJ Feild (Thax), Noel Clarke (Macros), Riz Ahmed (Tarak), Dimitri Leonidas (Leonidas), Ulrich Thomsen (Gorlacon), Imogen Poots (Arianne), Paul Freeman (Gnaeus Julius Agricola), Rachael Stirling (Drusilla), Less Ross (Septus)

It’s an old fable: the “missing” Roman legion, the 9^thLegion that allegedly marched to Scotland around 120 AD. We don’t know what happened (if anything) but it usually gets tied into Hadrian’s decision to build his famous wall. Anyway, Neil Marshall’s film tries to plug the gap, with the Legion eradicated on an ill-judged expedition north to settle affairs there once for all. A “ragtag bunch” of survivors (all of whom match expected character tropes) have to run over hostile countryside, led by surviving senior officer Centurion Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) to get back to safety and Roman lines.

It’s a Neil Marshall film, so you can expect blood-letting aplenty and high-octane action on a budget. And you more or less get it, mixed with his love for accelerator-hitting chases and against-the-odds action. It’s entertaining enough, but its main problem is that it feels a little too by-the-numbers, as if all the thought about how to make it original and exciting went straight into the look and style of the film – all drained out colours and serious claret – and none at all into storytelling or character.

You sort of end up caring for the characters in a functional way – largely because they are all such familiar types – but their personalities seem to have been designed entirely around the various deaths that have been invented for them. So the enthusiastic meet unjust ends, the likeable fall to cruel chance, the world-weary give their lives for one more stand, the selfish meet justice. At the end, the characters you would basically expect to stumble to the finish line do. It’s a film that lacks any uniqueness.

In fact, what gives the characters life is the professional character actors playing them, all of whom can do what they are doing here standing on their heads and look like they were largely there with an eye on pleasant after-shooting hours in a series of local pubs. It’s hard otherwise to think what attracted them to these cardboard cut-outs and pretty familiar structure.

Not that there is anything wrong with what Marshall does with his film here – it’s a lot of fun when stuff is happening, it’s just that nothing feels like it carries enough weight or originality to survive in the memory. Everything is fine but nothing is really inspired. There is very little sense of Ancient Rome or any other place. The Romans are basically squaddies, an idea that sounds interesting until you remember turning period warriors into versions of modern soldiers is hardly new, while the Brits chasing them are woad-covered psycho stereotypes.

So while it passes the time, Centurion does nothing special with it. It feels like a wasted opportunity – that with a cast this good and a decent premise, plus a nice little historical mystery to pin it onto in order to give it depth, Marshall could have come up with something that was more than the sum of its parts rather than less. Perhaps it needed more time with its ragtag group so they actually became characters rather than plot devices. Perhaps it needed to take more of a rest from its constant chasing to allow quieter moments of reflection and character. Perhaps it’s just a chase film that is never quite compelling enough to make you overlook these things. Either way, Centurion isn’t an all-conquering empire of film.

First Man (2018)

Ryan Gosling as an unreadable Neil Armstrong in the engrossing but cold First Man

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Ryan Gosling (Neil Armstrong), Claire Foy (Janet Armstrong), Jason Clarke (Ed White), Kyle Chandler (Deke Slayton), Corey Stoll (Buzz Aldrin), Pablo Schreiber (Jim Lovell), Christopher Abbott (David Scott), Patrick Fugit (Elliot See), Lukas Haas (Michael Collins), Shea Whigham (Gus Grissom), Brian d’Arcy James (Joseph Walker), Cory Michael Smith (Roger Chaffee), Ciaran Hinds (Robert R Gilruth)

About halfway through this film, it struck me: Neil Armstrong is a not particularly interesting man who experienced the most interesting thing ever. It’s a problem that First Man, an otherwise exemplary film, struggles with: Armstrong himself, put bluntly, is unknowable, undefinable and, in the end, an enigma I’m not sure there is much to unwrap. Which is not to detract one iota from Armstrong’s amazing achievements, or his legendary calmness under pressure or his courage and perseverance. It just doesn’t always make for good storytelling.

First Man charts the years 1961-1969. During these years of professional triumph, Armstrong has success as test pilot, an astronaut on the Gemini programme (including command of Gemini 8, carrying out the first docking in space then saving his own life and the life of his pilot with his quick thinking when the mission nearly encounters disaster) and then the Apollo programme and his own first steps upon the moon. But Armstrong’s life is dogged by loss and tragedy, first his five-year old daughter to cancer, then a string of friends in accidents during the hazardous early days of the NASA space programme, including the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. Armstrong becomes a man burdened with these losses.

There is very little to fault in the making of First Man – in fact it’s further evidence that Chazelle is a gifted filmmaker with a glittering future of great movies ahead. There are two things this film absolutely nails: the supreme majesty and awe of space and the terrifyingly rickety nature of the spacecraft we send men up into it in.

Helped hugely by a superb score by Justin Hurwitz, which makes extensive and beautiful use of a theremin, the film captures the sense of mankind’s smallness, our vulnerability, in the face of the overwhelming vastness of space. Mixing goose-bump inducing wailing solos with orchestral sweep, and encapsulating the feeling of how small and lonely man in space is, the score goes a long way to match up with the visuals in creating a sense of space. The Oscar-winning visual effects – mixing computer graphics with some ingenious practical effects – never intrude but bring out the gritty reality of tin cans in space.

Chazelle also really understands the impact of being so far beyond anything we can imagine, and his moon landing sequence is a thing of beauty. He expertly uses a number of close ups in the confined, claustrophobic campaign and largely eschews exterior shots (most of which only use the perspective of the crew’s view from the tiny windows, or of the cameras mounted on the side of the spacecraft). The moon landing follows suit, as we are thrown in alongside Armstrong and Aldrin as the lunar landing module takes its place on the moon – until the hatch opens with a whoosh of air (and sound) escaping the picture. And with that whoosh, the camera flies out of the hatch and switches – in an astonishing visual trick – from wide screen to IMAX shot to give us our first view of the vastness of space filling the frame. Suddenly, space fills the entire screen and the shocking beauty of the moon is a beautiful touch. We get as close as we can visually to experiencing the switch for Armstrong from confined spaces and beeping switches to vast panoramas and all-consuming silence.

And we really feel the switch, because Chazelle has so completely immersed us into the dangers and insecurities of the space programme. The spacecraft are repeatedly shown as alarmingly shaky, screwed together (the camera frequently pans along lines of bolts inside the cabins), thin, tiny, vulnerable capsules that shake, groan, whine and seem barely able to survive the stresses and strains they are put under. Any doubts about the risks the astronauts are under are dispelled in the opening sequence when Armstrong’s X-15 rocket twice bounces off the atmosphere and the internal cockpit around him glows orange under the extreme heat. But it’s the same on every flight we see – these craft don’t look safe enough for a short hop to the Isle of Wight, let alone hundreds of thousands of miles to the moon and back.

And that’s clear as well from the danger that lurks around every corner of the space programme. Death is a constant companion for these pilots and can come at any time. Armstrong himself escapes only due to a combination of luck and skill. When luck disappears, death follows swiftly for many of his co-pilots. Off-screen crashes claim the lives of three of his friends. Chazelle sensitively handles the horrifying Apollo 1 fire (news reaches Armstrong of the death of several friends, including his closest Ed White, while wining and dining politicians at the White House), and the terrible cost of this tragedy hangs over every single second of the moon programme. Fate or chance at any moment could claim lives. This grim air of mortality hangs over the whole film, a melancholic reminder of the cost of going further and faster to expand mankind’s horizons.

This grief also runs through Armstrong’s life and shapes him into the man he becomes. The death of Armstrong’s daughter at the start of the film sets the tone – the shocking loss of a child at such a young age is tangible – and it seems (in the film) as if this was the moment that led to Armstrong hardening himself against the world. He weeps uncontrollably at the death of his daughter, but later deaths are met with stoic coolness. Armstrong in this film is a cool enigma, who by the end of the film treats concerned questions from his children about whether he will return alive from the moon mission with the same detachment he shows at the official NASA press conference. “We have every confidence in the mission” he tells these two pre-teens, “Any further questions?”

It’s the film’s main problem that in making Armstrong such an unreadable man, who buttons up and represses all emotion, that it also drains some of the drama and human interest from the story. While you can respect Armstrong’s professionalism and coolness under pressure, his icy unrelatability makes him hard to really root for over the course of two hours. The film also strangely only sketches in the vaguest of personalities for the other astronauts (Aldrin gets the most screentime, but is presented as an arrogant, insensitive blowhard) so we hardly feel the loss of the deaths. Its part of the attitude towards Armstrong as a man chiselled from marble, so lofty that the film doesn’t dare to really delve inside his own inner world or feelings but builds a careful front around him to avoid analysis.

It’s not helped by Ryan Gosling, whose skill for blankness makes him somewhat miscast here. Try as he might, he can’t suggest a deeper world of emotional torment below the calm surface, no matter how soulful his eyes. It’s a role you feel needed a British actor, who could really understand this culture of repressed stiff-upper-lipness. Indeed Claire Foy fares much better as his patient, loyal wife who holds her composure (more or less) for the whole film under the same pressures of grief as Armstrong. Gosling just can’t communicate this inner depth, and his blankness eventually begins to crush the film and our investment in its lead character.

First Man in almost every other respect is a great piece of film-making and another sign of Chazelle’s brilliance. But it’s never as dramatic as you feel it should be. Armstrong’s life doesn’t carry enough event outside his moon landing experience, and the film can’t make an emotional connection with the man, for all the loss and suffering it shows for him. For a film that is so close to so perfect on space and the Apollo programme it’s a shame – but makes this more a brilliant dramatized documentary than perhaps a drama.

The Untouchables (1987)

Super stylish cops and robbers thriller, as Costner and Connery take on Capone

Director: Brian de Palma

Cast: Kevin Costner (Eliot Ness), Sean Connery (Jimmy Malone), Andy Garcia (George Stone), Robert De Niro (Al Capone), Charles Martin Smith (Oscar Wallace), Patricia Clarkson (Catherine Ness), Billy Drago (Frank Nitti), Richard Bradford (Chief Mike Dorsett), Jack Kehoe (Walter Payne)

“What are you prepared to do!”

It’s the motto of this electric law-enforcement film, one of those all-time classics that provides endlessly quotable lines and moments you can’t forget. It’s crammed with iconic moments, from its brilliantly quotable dialogue from David Mamet, via its wonderful music score, to its artful film literacy and iconic performances. If there is an untouchable film, this one is pretty close. I love it.

It’s 1930, prohibition is in full force and Chicago is ruled by gangland kingpin Al Capone (Robert De Niro). Young Federal Officer Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is thrown into Chicago to end Capone’s reign and stamp out the illegal liquor business. Not surprisingly, it’s hard to know who to trust in a town as stinking as this one, until a chance meeting with disillusioned beat cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) helps him find a group of people he can trust – “Untouchables” who aren’t going to go on Capone’s payroll. But to bring Capone down he’s going to have to embrace the “Chicago way” and start to bend his strict moral code.

Listening to Brian de Palma talk about the making of the movie, you can’t help but suspect he felt he was doing one for the suits rather than one from the heart. Well perhaps he should do that more often, because The Untouchables is a lean, mean, hugely entertaining action-adventure, that plays with genuine ideas and but also nails every single moment. Every scene is shot with a confident, compelling swagger – the sort of thing that reminds you what a conneseur of high-class pulp de Palma can be. The Untouchables plays out like a super-brainy graphic novel adaptation, and every scene sings. There is barely a duff moment in there.

A lot of this comes straight from David Mamet’s brilliant script. Really, with lines like this, moments as well-crafted as this, characters as clearly, brilliantly defined as the ones on show here, you can’t go wrong. Quotable lines fall from the actors’ lips like the gifts they are: “He brings a knife, you bring a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago Way!” It’s dialogue like this that just has ageless appeal, the sort of stuff you find yourself trying to work into day-to-day conversation.

But Mamet’s script is also sharply clever. It swiftly lays out at the start Ness’ moral compass, his code – and then, as the film progresses, it cleverly shows the whys and wherefores for Ness compromising these. Needless to say, the man at the end of the film is totally different from the bright-eyed naïve agent we met at the start. Mamet also brilliantly works shades of grey into all our heroes, while scripting some compelling moments of grandstanding bastardy that an actor as marvellous as De Niro is just waiting to send to the back of the net.

De Niro was of course the inevitable choice as Capone. Bob Hoskins was contracted just in case De Niro said no (when told De Niro would be taking the job but he would get a $20k pay-out for his time, Hoskins told de Palma he’d be thrilled to hear about any other movies de Palma didn’t want him to be in), but it had to be Bobby. The film drops Capone in at key moments: the film opens with the swaggering bully delighted at holding court with English newspapers while being shaved (de Palma’s camera draws down from an overhead shot, like a spider descending from the ceiling, to reveal him in the barber’s chair) – a flash of danger emerges when the barber slips and cuts Capone’s face (de Niro’s flash of fury, followed by his decision to pardon – combined with the barber’s terror – is perfect). Later Capone rages at Ness, hosts a very messy dinner party with a baseball bat, and weeps at the theatre while a key character bleeds to death at his home (a brilliant example of de Palma’s mastery of B-movie cost cutting). He’s the perfect dark heart.

And opposite him you need a white knight – even if it a white knight who is set to be sullied. I’m not sure Kevin Costner ever topped his performance here, in the film that made him a superstar overnight. Looking like the perfect boy scout – his fresh faced earnestness is one of his finest qualities – Costner also has a WASPish hardness under the surface. The burning determination he has to destroy Capone, his disgust at the murder and chaos Capone deals in, is never in doubt – just as his initial naïveté about how to end Capone is all too clear. Costner masterfully shows how each event pushes Ness a step or two further in bending his rules, to fight Capone’s ruthlessness with ruthlessness of his own. “What are you prepared to do!” Malone asks him, and the film is about Ness working out how far his moral compass can stretch. I can’t think of many films that so completely and successfully have the lead character change as much as Costner does here without it feeling rushed or forced. It’s a wonderful performance.

But the film is stolen – and it’s no surprise, as he has the showiest part, most of the best lines, and of course the movie-star cool – by Connery. It’s easy to mock Connery’s blatantly Scottish Irish cop – he gives the accent a go for his first scene, but promptly drops it. What Connery’s performance is really all about is an old dog who never got a chance to do the right thing, finally being given the licence, the support and the inspiration from the younger man to clean up this filthy city. And Connery rages in the film, a force of nature, the perfect mentor, the cop who against all initial expectations is prepared to go through any and all risks to get Capone. He’s the samurai beat cop, and Connery (Oscar-winning) growls through Mamet’s dialogue with all the love of the seasoned pro letting rip. It’s an iconic performance – and led to a five year purple patch of great films and roles for Connery.

But the film works partly because of these great performances and the script, but also because of de Palma’s direction. The pacing is absolutely spot-on, the camera full of moments of flash and invention. Every action sequence has its own distinct tone, from the horse riding hi-jinks of a Canadian border interception of a booze truck, to the dark slaughter late at night of one of the film’s main characters (a masterful, Hitchcockian piece of genius by the way that uses the POV shot to exceptional effect). A late roof chase sizzles with a ruthless energy.

But the real highpoint of the action is of course that famous train-station shoot out. Allegedly the original plans on the day had to be ditched due to budgetary reasons – so cinephile de Palma pulled a sublime Battleship Potemkin homage out of his locker. Shot in near silence, save for gunshots, the bounce of a pram falling down the station stairs (baby on board) and a spare score from Morricone, the sequence is true bravura cinema, both hugely exciting and strangely endearing for all those who know anything about the history of cinema.

De Palma and Mamet keep the story focused, clear and every scene has a clear purpose and goal. There isn’t a single superfluous character or moment. Everything is perfectly assembled to serve the overall impact of the film. It’s gripping, entertaining and compelling: the sort of film where if you catch it at the right age it has you for life. Ennio Morricone’s operatic score is perfect for the film, underlining and emphasising every moment and effectively sweeping you up. Costner and Connery are superb, De Niro is perfect, the film is a gift that has something new to give every time you see it.

The Next Three Days (2010)

Elizabeth Banks and Russell Crowe go on the run in workmanlike thriller The Next Three Days

Director: Paul Haggis

Cast: Russell Crowe (John Brennan), Elizabeth Banks (Laura Brennan), Brian Dennehy (George Brennan), Lennie James (Lt Nabulsi), Olivia Wilde (Nicole), Ty Simpkins (Luke Brennan), Helen Carey (Grace Brennan), Liam Neeson (Damon Pennington), Daniel Stern (Meyer Fisk)

What would you do to protect the person you love? How far would you go to keep her safe? What would you sacrifice? What rules would you break? Paul Haggis’ serviceable thriller tries to answer these questions, but doesn’t really get much closer to the answers than I have here.

Russell Crowe is John Brennan, a teacher of English Literature at a mid-ranking college. One day, his wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks) is arrested for the murder of her boss. Despite her pleas of innocence, before they know it she is sentenced to spend most of the rest of her life behind bars. When desperation at the thought of her fate – and missing the upbringing of their young son – leads her to attempt suicide, John decides to take the extreme step of breaking her out of prison. But where to begin with the planning? And what will he be prepared to do?

It’s the sort of film that early-on has the lead character meet a ruthless expert (in this case an ex-con with a history of prison breaks, played with a growling enjoyment by Liam Neeson in a one-scene cameo) who outlines a list of rules and terrible things that the hero will be forced to do. The hero looks askance – but sure enough each situation arises and doncha know it the hero is forced to bend his own morality to meet the needs of his mission. What a surprise.

Only of course the film doesn’t have the courage to force Crowe’s John to actually do things that bend his morality. There is always a get-out clause. When his actions lead to him taking a petty criminal’s life (while stealing money from a drug den), it’s self-defence. When he looks like he may be forced to put innocent people in harm’s way, he backs away. When he’s asked to sacrifice something major, he refuses. The film wants to be the sort of film where we see the lead character change inexorably as he becomes harder and more ruthless to achieve his mission. But it worries about losing our sympathy, so constantly gives the audience and the character get-out clauses to excuse his behaviour.

Not that Crowe gives a bad performance – he’s actually rather convincing as a humble, slightly timid man way out of his depth at the start – but the film fails completely to show these events really changing the man. It believes that it’s turning him into a darker, more ruthless person, but it isn’t. At heart, this film isn’t really a character-study at all but a dark caper movie. Obstacles are constantly thrown in the path of our hero, many of which bamboozle him: but then when we hit the prison break itself at last, suddenly he’s pulling carefully planned rabbits and double bluffs out of his hat like Danny Ocean. It’s a film that wants to have its cake and eat it: to show a hero bewildered by his task, in danger from this ruthless world he finds himself in – but also to have him become a sort of long-game con artist thinking three moves ahead of the police.

It just doesn’t quite tie up. It’s the film adapting to whatever it feels the requirements and desires of the audience might be at a particular moment rather than something that develops naturally. Enjoyable as it is to see these sort of games play out, you can’t help but feel a little bit cheated – there has been no indication before this that the character has this level of ingenuity in him.

He doesn’t even really need to pay a price beyond that which he had accepted from the start: at points major sacrifices are dangled before him but he never needs to make any of them. He never has to really bend his personal morality significantly. It’s the cleanest conversion to criminality that you are likely to see.

The film cracks along at a decent pace – even if it is a little too long – and shows its various twists and reveals fairly well. Elizabeth Banks is pretty good as Laura, even though she hardly seems the most sympathetic character from the start (the audience has to do a bit of work for why Crowe’s character seems so devoted to her). Most of the rest of the cast are basically slightly larger cameos but no one disgraces themselves.

The main problem with the film is its lack of depth and ambition. Mentioning Don Quixote several times in the narrative doesn’t magically grant a film depth and automatically create intelligent contrasts with the novel. Instead it just sounds like straining for depth rather than actually having it.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1956)

Spencer Tracy is the only just man in town, in brilliant modern Western Bad Day at Black Rock

Director: John Sturges

Cast: Spencer Tracy (John J Macreedy), Robert Ryan (Reno Smith), Anne Francis (Liz Wirth), Dean Jagger (Sheriff Tim Horn), Walter Brennan (Doc Viele), John Ericson (Pete Wirth), Ernest Borgnine (Coley Trimble), Lee Marvin (Hector David), Russell Collins (Mr Hastings), Walter Sande (Sam)

A man walks into a town. It’s a dust bowl town, looks like it’s just one street with a few buildings. The natives sit warily outside the bar and treat the stranger with suspicion. Trigger fingers are itchy. Is it the Wild West? No it’s 1945, but the new guy in town is about to find out just how unfriendly the American West can be. Just as well that, despite only having one hand, he’s more than capable of looking after himself.

Spencer Tracy, perfect as a man of rigid principles and certainties who won’t waver in the face of any intimidation, is our no-nonsense hero Macreedy. Arriving in town, he’s looking for Japanese-American farmer Komoko, father of a deceased colleague from the war, but no one wants to talk about where he is or what happened to him. Sheriff Horn (Dean Jagger) is an alcoholic who doesn’t want to know anything, the local doctor (Walter Brennan) doesn’t want to get involved and hotel clerk Pete (John Ericson) doesn’t want to give Macreedy a home. Macreedy is tailed on arrival by a couple of intimidating heavies (Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin – the go-to guys at the time for these sort of roles), and quickly works out the town is run by local businessman Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) – and any secrets it holds ain’t coming out easy.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a classic western, set in a time when the world of the West had been left far behind. American culture has a romantic longing for rural, small-town America, and the heroic past of the pioneers of the old West. Bad Day inverts a lot of this mythology: this America is horribly corrupt, unspeakably racist and hiding no end of dirty linen in its cupboards. In fact, small-town America is horrible, while the man from the big city represents all that is good – that in itself is quite a surprise turnaround from what you might expect from Hollywood.

In many ways it’s a very simple, very gripping, film. Macreedy’s arrival in the town sparks guilty consciences and sets the town bully, Reno Smith, into a quiet, panicked breakdown. We know watching it roughly where the film is likely to go. However, what Sturges does well is to invest this with so much attention. Huge chunks of the film involve both Macreedy and the men of the town, tensely trying to work out what is going on, or watching and waiting to see what opportunities there will be. It’s a film packed with moments of waiting or characters sitting and watching, talking around subjects rather than tackling the big questions they want to ask. It sounds slow but it actually builds up an extraordinary amount of danger and feeling of danger.

It’s a drama that works on the slow burn while also being a very short, snappily paced film. The best part of the first half-hour of the film is the careful establishing of the atmosphere, the relationships between the different characters, and the politics of this Western town. In the middle of this we have Macreedy, the man of mystery whom we know nothing about, who never seems to rise to the unfriendly intimidation he meets from every corner. You know that all this tension is going to erupt into something serious – but the film constantly leaves you guessing exactly how it will pan out and keeps you surprised about who ends up on which side.

You couldn’t get a better actor for this role than Spencer Tracy. There is something so rigidly determined about Tracy in this film, so adamantine and determined – the sort of man who operates in rights and wrongs, who even in this world of intimidation and terror tries to play by some sort of rules for as long as he possibly can. What’s so great about Tracy in this film is that he seems like both a stranger in black and a disappointed dad, with the people in the town constantly letting him down. The film also teases us for a long time – we suspect throughout that Macreedy is more dangerous and more capable of looking after himself than he appears. (It was Tracy who insisted, by the way, that Macreedy be made one-armed, as he thought it could give Macreedy an interesting vulnerability to overcome).

The film makes us wait for its three action set-pieces: a car chase, a bar fight and a shoot-out. But it’s perfect in its patience, because violence always seems like it could burst out at any time. Marvin and Borgnine as the obvious heavies do great work as different types of overt muscle. Robert Ryan as the corrupt guy who really runs the town is especially good as a man who seems, under his dominance, to only just be holding onto his self-control, going to great lengths to prevent himself getting into trouble. It’s a point that Macreedy himself makes – deep down, Smith doesn’t have the guts to do his dirty work alone, and gets his strength from controlling others. All this delicate mixture of guilt and fear that bubbles under the surface of Smith is apparent in Ryan’s excellent performance.

But then no-one in the town is in control. Dean Jagger’s moral weakling sheriff is a drunk and a pathetic loser. Walter Brennan’s (very good) doctor wants to do the right thing, but lacks the guts to do it. John Ericsen’s hotel clerk knows he’s in the wrong, but isn’t brave enough to stand his ground. Their lack of control is in fact the root of the problem – Macreedy would never have suspected there were any dark secrets to uncover in the town if the people there hadn’t treated him with such overt suspicion. Sturges captures this perfectly (even if I think the Cinemascope width of shot isn’t perfect for a film that gets so much play out of claustrophobia and suspicion).

Politically the film is pretty simple – racism ain’t good you know – but as an example of brilliantly assembled Western tension and moral righteousness, mixed with a bit of action, adventure and claustrophobia, it works really well. Brilliantly directed, and very well written as a piece of expressive theatre, this is terrific with some wonderful performances. And front and centre is Spencer Tracy as the ultimate man in black, a man with moral certainty and courage, whom it’s impossible not to admire.

The First Great Train Robbery (1978)

Sean Connery and Lesley-Anne Down grab a train ride in The First Great Train Robbery

Director: Michael Crichton

Cast: Sean Connery (Edward Pierce), Donald Sutherland (Robert Agar), Lesley-Anne Down (Miriam) Alan Webb (Trent), Malcolm Terris (Henry Fowler), Robert Lang (Inspector Sharp), Michael Elphick (Burgess), Wayne Sleep (Clean Willy), Pamela Salem (Emily Trent), Gabrielle Lloyd (Elizabeth Trent), James Cossins (Harranby), André Morell (Judge)

When you think about Michael Crichton, it’s easy to forget he had many more strings to his bow than just writing airport plot boilers. He created ER, he wrote and directed a number of films (most famously WestWorld) – and one of his best books is actually a piece of semi-history, The Great Train Robbery. This book – a brilliantly researched and entertaining part history, part fictionalisation – covers the story of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a train-based gold heist.

Crichton’s film of this book takes a slightly different tone – its realism is toned down slightly, its nose-thumbing anti-establishmentism shaved off, in favour of a lighter comic farce, a caper movie. It makes for an enjoyable movie – but it’s less interesting than the book’s documentary realism and its careful construction of the vast number of obstacles the criminals needed to ingeniously overcome.

Edward Pierce (Sean Connery) is a professional criminal who can pose as an upper-class gent. Having befriended a number of senior people from a leading city bank, he plans a daring heist on a train carrying gold from London to Dover – gold bound for the Crimean war. Pierce puts together a detailed plan – that involves gaining possession of copies of four keys essential for getting access to the safe on the train containing the gold – and recruits a team including expert locksmith and pickpocket Robert Agar (Donald Sutherland) and cunning courtesan Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down).

The First Great Train Robbery is a caper – and it has all the structure and energy you would expect. From Jerry Goldsmith’s lyrical score to the framing device that constantly returns to Pierce’s key box getting fuller and fuller (like fingers flying up when recruiting The Magnificent Seven), the whole shebang is told with real lightness. Nothing is too serious – the criminals’ actions aren’t designed to hurt anyone (apart from one of their number who turns informant) – and the overall mood is a lark, with the criminals engaging in a boys’ own adventure.

This is helped by the excellent light-comedic playing from Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland as the two main architects of the crime. Connery uses his smoothness (hiding a chippy edge) extremely well – he’s the charming man you’d want to spend time with, and he wraps you up in his own sense of fun. Any obstacles are usually met with a wry smile – like some sort of period Danny Ocean, Pierce is always one-step ahead of the game. Sutherland – with an odd, half Irish accent – makes a very good put-upon wingman, grumbling but still enjoying the ride.

Most of the rest of the cast don’t make much of an impact. Lesley Anne-Down gets some comedic business – particularly a seduction that is designed to go wrong to gain possession of a key – but not a lot else to do. Malcolm Terris and Alan Webb bluster as arrogant dupes. Robert Lang growls as an angry cop. Wayne Sleep of all people pops up as an expert burglar.

The film sweeps from set-up to set-up, very competently filmed, with some decent design and photography (it was the last film of legendary photographer Geoffrey Unsworth). Crichton is a decent director, and if some moments look a bit dated or are a little too much (some make-up for Sutherland at one point looks rubbish) it’s still pretty good.

The real problem is that you lose the sense that, by-and-large, a lot of this actually happened – I mean, sure, it was probably with less banter and jokes, but people really did a lot of this stuff. The film doesn’t always dwell enough on the problems the thieves face, and doesn’t always explain why these obstacles are so vital to overcome. It misses a trick here with its eagerness to keep barrelling forward.

What this means is that film sometimes misses the sense of triumph and satisfaction of overcoming real hurdles – or the frisson of having it clear that a lot of these were real solutions that a real person came up with. The film also rushes its final conclusions. Historically we don’t know what happened to the gold and there was a trial of some of those involved – but the film never really makes that clear. Its conclusion zeroes in again on some hi-jinks, but it doesn’t really make clear the impact, the consequences or what happened to the Macguffin at its centre. You also don’t get the sense of hypocrisy the book mines so well, with the corruption of the upper classes being glossed over by society, but the thievery of the working classes being outright condemned. I missed that a lot from the film – fun as it is.

It’s an entertaining film but, to be honest, it’s not as good as the book – which is actually really worth a read. Crichton is a man with more talent than people give him credit for.

The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Gregory Peck leads one of the first men-on-a-mission films in The Guns of Nararone

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Cast: Gregory Peck (Captain Keith Mallory), David Niven (Corporal Miller), Anthony Quinn (Colonel Andrea Stavrou), Stanley Baker (Private “Butcher” Brown), Anthony Quayle (Major Roy Franklin), Irene Papas (Maria Pappadimos), Gia Scala (Anna), James Darren (Private Spyro Pappadimos), James Robertson Justice (Commodore Jensen), Richard Harris (Squadron Leader Barnsby), Bryan Forbes (Cohn), Allan Cuthbertson (Major Baker), Walter Gotell (Oberleutnant Meusel), George Mikell (Hauptstaumführer Sessler)

The Guns of Navarone is the archetypical “men on a mission” classic – it was the first major film to feature a team of specialists, all played by famous actors, going behind the lines to carry out some impossible task, leaving a trail of explosions and dead Nazis in their wake. Guns of Navarone was lavished with box-office success – and Oscar nominations, surprisingly – and although it’s a little too long, and a little weakly paced at times (as Thompson himself has admitted) it’s still got a cracking, bank holiday afternoon enjoyability about it. It’s not perfect, but honestly who could resist it?

In 1943, 2,000 British soldiers are stranded on the Greek island of Kheros. The Royal Navy plans to rescue them – but the way is blocked by two massive, radar controlled guns, in an impenetrable mountain base. The air force can’t take it out: so it’s up to Commando leader Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle) to put together a team to do it. Recruiting mountaineer-turned-intelligence-agent Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), explosives expert Miller (David Niven) and Greek-resistance leader Andrea Stavrou (who else but Anthony Quinn?), Franklin leads the team in. But when he is injured, the ruthless Mallory takes command – and leads the team in a perilous behind-the-lines raid.

I’d not seen Guns of the Navarone for a few years, and I’d forgotten what a brilliantly fun, boys-own-adventure thriller it is. I’d also forgotten what a lot of time is given early on into establishing what a team of bad-asses this group are. There seems to be no limit to their ruthless, knife wielding, gun running, cold-eyed killer bravery. And they hired a hell of a cast to play it as well – so damn good that you completely forget Peck, Niven, Quayle and Quinn are all just a little bit too over-the-hill for the derring-do they are called on to carry out.

Guns of Navarone brilliantly explains the mission aims, all the stakes and introduces each of the characters and their basic backstory, before the film basically gives us a series of action set-pieces – on a boat, at the coast, on a cliff, in a village, in a German cell, in Greek ruins, in a German base. It covers everything, and each scene is directed with real verve and increasing tension, with a simplicity to camera-work and editing that really lets the action breathe. The final sequence, waiting for the booby trap to explode among the guns, is a brilliantly done “rule of three” waiting game, with the tension building up each time.

The film is also rattling good fun, and gives each of its actors’ set-piece moments. Gregory Peck grounds the film perfectly as the increasingly ruthless Mallory, willing to sacrifice a number of pawns to achieve the target, but has a war weariness that still makes him sympathetic (as a side note, Peck’s German accent was so woeful all his German was dubbed). Niven plays Miller as a mixture of louche whiner, chippy middle-class man and natural-born troublemaker – and gets some knock-out speeches on the morality of war (Niven by the way nearly died after catching pneumonia during the boat wreck sequence).

Anthony Quinn had a monopoly on playing exotic roles at the time – from Mexicans to Arabs, from Gaugain to Zorba the Greek – so no great surprise he plays the Greek colonel here. He’s terrific though, a cold-eyed ruthless killer – and the sequence where he pretends to be a cowardly awkward fisherman is wonderful (not least for Stavrou’s reaction to Miller’s praise for his performance – a half shrug and a “so-so” hand gesture, one of my favourite ever “character” touches in the movies). Irene Papas is perfect as his female equivalent, while Anthony Quayle puts together another of his “decent army officer chaps” as boys-own adventurer Franklin. Baker and Darren don’t get huge amounts to do, but Baker does well with a “lost my taste for this killing malarkey” sub-plot.

Many of the character beats were so well-done they basically became archetypes for every “group on a mission” film since (the austere leader, the difficult whiner, the old-school traditionalist, the ruthless warrior, the maverick, the one who’s lost his nerve – and, uh, I guess James Darren is the “sexy” one). The actors play off each other superbly. There are also some great cameos – Robertson Justice is great as “the man in charge”, Walter Gotell very good as an archetypical “worthy adversary” German – there is even a slightly bizarre cameo from Richard Harris as an Aussie pilot (yup you read that right).

Navarone’s pace doesn’t always quite work – the gaps between the action sequences do lag. It takes nearly 45 minutes for our heroes to even get to Navarone. The film also can’t quite decide its stance on warfare. We get Miller’s passionate speeches on the pointlessness of missions when wars are always going to happen anyway. The unmasking of a traitor leads to a long debate on the morality of killing them or not. Several of the characters question the point and morality of war. But then, the film spends plenty of time on Alistair MacLean thriller beats: there is killing-a-plenty of German soldiers, gunned down with ruthless efficiency (not quite as many as Where Eagles Dare but pretty close!). There are small references to Greek villages paying a heavy price in retribution for the gang’s action – but these considerations never even slow them down, or make them stop to think.

Not that it really matters – this is a boy’s own action film, full of hard-as-nails actors grimly “doing what a man’s gotta do” throughout. And, despite being a little too long and aiming for a depth it doesn’t always follow through on, it’s brilliantly assembled, the action sequences are tightly directed, and the acting has a square-jawed confidence to it. Niven is pretty much perfect as the slightly dishevelled Miller, and the clashing relationship between him and Peck growing into respect, has fine bromance to it. Navarone is the first of its kind, and it’s still (and always will be) one of the best – really exciting, really thrilling, really damn good fun.

The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Kirk Douglas runs rings around the Germans in The Heroes of Telemark

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Kirk Douglas (Dr Rolf Pedersen), Richard Harris (Knut Straud), Ulla Jacobsson (Anna Pedersen), Michael Redgrave (Uncle), David Weston (Arne), Roy Dotrice (Jensen), Anton Diffring (Major Frick), Ralph Michael (Nilssen), Eric Porter (Josef Terboven), Sebastian Breaks (Gunnar), John Golightly (Freddy), Alan Howard (Oli), Patrick Jordan (Henrik), William Marlowe (Claus), Brook Williams (Einar)

During the Second World War, Telemark in Norway was the main production factory for Heavy Water, a key component for the German nuclear programme. Norwegian commandoes were ordered to destroy the factory, which they did with a cunning plan. This film dramatizes the story – adding more guns and violence – but does at least make the lead characters Norwegian. Knut Straud (Richard Harris) is the leader of the resistance, Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas) the professor who identifies what the factory is churning out. Parachuted back into Norway after secretly travelling to Britain to discuss issues with the allies, they start to plan a raid.

The Heroes of Telemark is sub-par boys-own action stuff, a sort of cross between Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone but nowhere near as good as either. Despite being crammed with derring-do, it’s strangely unmemorable, and although the stakes are really high, you never feel like you care. Everything in the film, bizarrely, feels a little bit easy. Our heroes are not particularly challenged (Nazi bigwig Terboven even berates his guards at the base for letting our heroes walk in and blow up the factory all while wearing British uniforms) but there isn’t any real price paid. The only heroes who bite the bullet are so heavily signposted for death, you actually spend most the film waiting for them to cop it.

Part of the problem is both Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris feel miscast in the lead roles. It’s also pretty clear (alleged) on-set tensions carried across into shooting – not only do the two characters not really seem to like each other, you don’t get any feeling of a growing bond between them as the film goes on. You end up not really caring about either of them – and since virtually everyone else on the team is hardly defined at all as a human being, that’s quite a big loss.

Douglas plays a bizarre professor of physics whose character varies wildly from scene to scene depending on the plot. Introduced making out with a student in a dark room, Pedersen initially denounces the boys-own heroics of the resistance. No sooner is a gun placed in his hand though, than he starts turning into a regular “ends justify the means” superman. Marry his new-found ruthlessness with his regular horn-dog attitude to women, and he’s a hard guy to like. I’m not sure a hero today would climb into bed with his estranged wife (a glamourous and pretty good Ulla Jaconssen) and then get shirty when she fails to put out. The part feels like an anti-hero role, reworked to give the Hollywood mega-star some action.

Richard Harris is similarly out-of-place as Knut Straud (a character based on the real commando who carried out the raid). He spends the whole film looking sullen and furious – he’s going for intense devotion to duty, but instead he looks like the whole thing is a tedious chore. Harris isn’t really anyone’s idea of an action star, and he’s an odd choice for the film altogether. For different reasons, just like Douglas, his stubborn touchiness makes him hard to like.

Following these rather disengaging figures means the derring-do constantly falls flat. It doesn’t help that Anthony Mann’s direction lacks thrust, drive and energy and never really gets the pulse going. Even during the most daring commando sequences, it never feels particularly thrilling. It’s a very easy film to drift away from, never managing to be as taut or tight as it should. The world-shattering stakes of the German nuclear programme are never clearly explained, or kept at the forefront. Chuck in some rather obvious doubles work (no way is Douglas that good a skier) and a few wonky model shots (the boulder Harris and co roll down the hill to try and take out Terboven’s car is all too clearly made of papier mache) and you’ve got a film that never gets going.

It also lacks an antagonist. Eric Porter has a couple of decent scenes here and there as Reichskommisar for Norway Josef Terboven, but he disappears from the film for ages. The Nazis end up as a faceless bunch of German soldiers, and are so easily overcome or fooled that they hardly count as challenges. As such, the clashes and arguments really come within the commando organisation itself, but since Harris and Douglas so clearly don’t like each other, even their brief reconciliation doesn’t ring that true.

The Heroes of Telemark will pass the time on a bank holiday afternoon. You get some decent performances – Roy Dotrice is very good as a possible quisling – and the odd good scene (Redgrave gets a good death scene) but it never really comes to life like it should. Mann’s direction is too plodding, and the pacing of the film so slack that it never becomes exciting or engaging. There are so many better movies on a similar theme you could be watching.