They Who Dare

The veteran director Lewis Milestone, who made the classic "All Quiet on the Western Front", takes on a British World War II picture with this exciting movie. It's notable for being shot in Technicolor, with outstanding location photography by Wilkie Cooper, differentiating it from so many black & white movies about the war.

Dirk Bogarde and Denholm Elliott lead a dozen men on a dangerous mission to blow up two airfields located on the Italian & German occupied Greek island of Rhodes. It's not to be accomplished as an air raid but by Dirk's men planting bombs by hand, arriving and hoping to escape by submarine.

Milestone sustains considerable suspense as we wonder who might survey the mission, and an ensemble cast does a convincing job of keeping the dialogue lively. Not very well-known in its genre but well worth watching.

British forces in the Mediterranean are being constantly harried by Luftwaffe aircraft based on Rhodes. It falls to Dirk Bogarde ("Lt. Graham") to lead a small squad of British and Greek fighters whose job will be to infiltrate the defences of two air bases and reduce them - and their planes - to rubble, then get themselves back to the awaiting submarine of Eric Pohlmann's jovial "Capt. Papadapoulos". It has spells when it is quite exciting, but for the most part this is a rather slow-to-start and meandering adventure story that focusses way too much on the foibles of the characters rather than delivering a solid story. A decent cast - Denholm Elliott, Sam Kidd and Akim Tamiroff add little to neutralise the verbosity of the whole thing and the denouement didn't seem to quite make sense (or perhaps I just blinked?). It could easily lose twenty minutes of the preamble and focus more on the military and raiding aspects of the plot which I think would improve it greatly. As it is, Bogarde does enough to keep it moving - but only just.

They Who Dare is directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Robert Westerby. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Akim Tamiroff, William Russell, Eric Pohlmann and Harold Siddons. Music is by Robert Gill and cinematography by Wilkie Cooper.

It's "men on a mission" time as Special Commandos and some Greek partisans meet up on Rhodes to blow up two German airfields. And that's about it really, oh of course there's problems along the way such as questions of loyalty, hazards and set-backs such as minefields, and talking – lots of talking - as the men stand or sit around pondering the war and or - their own inadequacies etc. When the big action finale comes it is kind of worth the wait, but the performances are only adequate throughout and the script is lazily written to the point of tedium setting in. 5/10

A British war drama; A story about a band of British commandos assigned to sabotage two Nazi outposts in the Aegean. This film is based on the British military mission Operation Anglo during World War II, an inspiring tale of a Special Boat Service attempt to disrupt the Luftwaffe from threatening Allied forces in Egypt. However, the film lacks thrills and is a rather predictable men-on-mission tale. Danger and action come without much suspense, and the film has a throwaway ending. Dirk Bogarde seems miscast as the leader of a deadly commando unit, and the rest of the cast, who perform well, are poorly served by sloppy dialogue. To its credit, the action is convincing, it has some attractive locations, and the colour and light of the setting are richly captured.

Not sure what I expected from this one. Dirk Bogarde is my favorite actor and I have had pleasant encounters with Milestone as well. Here the latter screws up on multiple occasions.

First off the cinematography is way too light and some of the shots are rather clumsy. The script could be faltered as well. And some of the acting, especially from the one playing a character who keeps singing this awful and quite annoying tune.

Mind you it's not bad. Bogarde's performance makes it worth while. But really if it hadn't been for him this would have been below mediocrity. It got a few strong moments and whenever Bogarde is on screen you nearly forget everything else that has been going on.

I will not recommend this but overall it was OK. I think the casting apartment did some horrible choices though.