Oberst Steiner (Michael Caine) is sent to England in 1943 to kidnap Winston Churchill and bring him to Berlin. Aided by a group of commandos and an Irishman, Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland).
With an all-star cast, aside from Caien and Sutherland, you have Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Larry Hagman, Treat Williams, this movie has the acting covered quite well. It was made in the 70’s so I can get over the almost entire lack of accents used by many of the German actors, and a so-so Irish brogue by Sutherland.
Much like “Das Boot”, this movie gives some insight into the mindset of a German soldier during World War 2. Yes, they are still the bad guys, whether they were Nazis or not, they were still the enemy and they sided with evil. But, it is good to see what drives such men, what makes people do the things they do. This movie isn’t as deep and insightful as “Das Boot”, but it does a fair job. You have Steiner, a man that is fighting for his country, he states at one point that he has nothing against the Jews. A fine statement, but as I stated before, he still sided with those that committed atrocity. You see the lengths that people will go to for revenge, for justice, for what they believe is right, even if they don’t fit our own moral compass.
The movie did lack the grittiness that I think a good war movie needs. Some things just seemed to polished for me. There is also the fact that anyone that knows anything about history knows that the German’s are doomed to fail, both in this quest as well as the war. This might ruin things for some people that don’t like to know how things are going to turn out, but for me, in cases like this it is the journey they take that makes it interesting.
For a farewell film from director John Sturges, “Magnificent Seven”, “Gunfigth at OK Corral”, and others, it is a journeyman performance. Not his best work, but still an enjoybale film, 3 Axes.