The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Synopsis: It’s kinda like The Gun on Ice Planet Zero...except there aren’t any Cylons.

Blurb From the VHS Jacket: “Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven are Allied saboteurs assigned an impossible mission – infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.”

What Did I Learn?: If you’re going to spy on your Resistance buddies, and you want to claim the Nazis left you with horrible scars on your back, it’s a really good idea to actually have a few scars to show off.  

You Might Like This Movie If: Your opinion of saboteurs wasn’t forever destroyed by Action Figure Therapy.

Really?: Let’s see...our heroes 1) outran a tidal wave while abandoning a sinking ship, 2) climbed a nearly-vertical faced mountain at night, during a thunderstorm, 3) escaped from the Gestapo by faking a heart attack, and 4) fortunately dodged a lot of machine-gun fire. It’s also lucky the Allies had Gregory Peck around, as he was described as being fluent in Greek and German, he had survived a year and a half behind enemy lines, and he was the “world’s best mountain climber” before the war.  

Rating: The Guns of Navarone is a fun and action-packed, albeit rather implausible WWII thriller. The heart of the movie, though, is Carl Foreman’s snappy dialogue, and the interactions between the stone-faced professional (Peck), the cut-throat man of honour (Quinn) and the demolitions expert who hates war and just wants to hold on to whatever humanity he has left (Niven). 7.5/10 stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054953/