Force 10 From Navarone (1979)

I wanted to review this movie in November during my blog’s Run-Up-to-Remembrance Day WWII theme, but I was only able to acquire a copy a few days ago. Please click the links to read my reviews of The Guns of Navarone (Force 10 is a sequel, made 18 years after the original, and not featuring any of the original stars), and The Sea Wolves, which also starred Gregory Peck and David Niven.

Synopsis: This time, they gotta blow up a bridge! And a dam! And...oh, just put your brain on pause and watch Harrison Ford and Robert Shaw bicker with each other.

Blurb From the VHS Jacket: “The original guns of Navarone were silenced by an elite international team of commandos whose daring mission made screen history in Carl Foreman’s breathtaking 1961 thriller The Guns of Navarone. But the game isn’t over yet. The survivors must now destroy a heavily-guarded bridge that could link the advancing Nazi forces with their Italian Fascist counterparts and cut off the Allied drive for victory.”

What Did I Learn?: Force 10 had nothing to do with Navarone.

You Might Like This Movie If: You’ve always wanted to see Apollo Creed take on a James Bond villain in a knife fight.

Really?: 1) Why did the Germans need that bridge when they had a huge dam with a roadway just upriver? 2) Carl Weathers’ character had an awfully bad attitude for a Sargeant. 3) Seriously – an Allied commando team has to steal an Allied plane, and even get into a fistfight with military police officers to keep the mission a secret? 4) In The Guns of Navarone, Mallory could speak “German like a German”, while Miller hated war; suddenly, Mallory is unilingual and Miller is more of a goofball.

Rating: Force 10 From Navarone is an enjoyable WWII action film featuring a post-Star Wars, pre-Indiana Jones Harrison Ford as a grumpy American colonel. That said, it does suffer from a credibility gap at times, and it’s sad that neither Gregory Peck nor David Niven signed on to play the characters they portrayed in The Guns of Navarone. It’s a fun movie, but you can’t take it too seriously. 6.5/10 stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077572/