Country: US/GB/TUR
Technical: col/2.39:1 122m
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Henry Cavill, Eliza González, Rory Kinnear, Cary Elwes, Freddie Fox, Danny Sapani, Til Schweiger
Synopsis:
A group of the Special Operations Executive during World War II is sent to destroy a U-Boat supply port on an island off West Africa.
Review:
Spectacularly packaged, nonchalantly violent war hokum, with cartoon Nazis out of central casting. Don't be fooled by the photo gallery postscript about Ian Fleming and company; this is classic male wish fulfilment fantasy courtesy of a past master in laddish entertainment. It name-checks McLean heroics via a Guns of Navarone opening, as a fishing boat is pulled over and searched, and Tarantino later on, in the way a mispronounced piece of German gives the game away, Inglourious Basterds-style. Not for a moment do we doubt that our friends, whether white, black or Jewish, will come through all but unscathed, as they purpose about their business in a kind of protective halo, bantering with one another in light comedy mode and shrugging off anachronisms like so many German bullets. It is all so irresistibly satisfying (but returned less than half of its budget at the box office); one cannot help feeling a straight treatment might have been better, if only for Anglo-German relations.
Country: US/GB/TUR
Technical: col/2.39:1 122m
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Henry Cavill, Eliza González, Rory Kinnear, Cary Elwes, Freddie Fox, Danny Sapani, Til Schweiger
Synopsis:
A group of the Special Operations Executive during World War II is sent to destroy a U-Boat supply port on an island off West Africa.
Review:
Spectacularly packaged, nonchalantly violent war hokum, with cartoon Nazis out of central casting. Don't be fooled by the photo gallery postscript about Ian Fleming and company; this is classic male wish fulfilment fantasy courtesy of a past master in laddish entertainment. It name-checks McLean heroics via a Guns of Navarone opening, as a fishing boat is pulled over and searched, and Tarantino later on, in the way a mispronounced piece of German gives the game away, Inglourious Basterds-style. Not for a moment do we doubt that our friends, whether white, black or Jewish, will come through all but unscathed, as they purpose about their business in a kind of protective halo, bantering with one another in light comedy mode and shrugging off anachronisms like so many German bullets. It is all so irresistibly satisfying (but returned less than half of its budget at the box office); one cannot help feeling a straight treatment might have been better, if only for Anglo-German relations.
