spwyner-569-31055

What makes this movie difficult to watch as early as Bruce's initial appearance 5 or 10 minutes in is his fashionable razor stubble. It would have been unheard of for any back area officer, especially a command officer to wear a 3 day beard. That there tends to cast doubt on the veracity of the rest of the movie that so far appears to be large on computer air war imagery and short on much of anything else. I imagine if I watch it long enough I might pilots anachronistically shouting "roger that."

I've been binge watching Mannix for the last 3 months beginning with season 1 up to this disaster of a story. My first impulse, as with one of the other reviewers, was that this was a discarded Mission Impossible script, as it clearly resembles no Mannix episode to date and has all the hallmarks of a MI episode right down to the doofus banana republic soldiers who can't fight their way out of a paper bag and phony street scenes in a fictitious country that appears to be totally Americanized right down to American cars lining the streets, but then I looked at the writer's IMDB credits and discovered he never wrote for MI. So that is a mystery. With respect to Mannix, he could have easily stayed home and they could have used a guest protagonist in the same way the used other actors to do the remaining Perry Mason movies after Raymond Burr died. It seemed to work okay. But more importantly, notwithstanding being handed a louse script Mike Connors seemed to take advantage instead of trying to make the best of a rotten situation. In the scene of him in the front seat of the airplane waiting for the pilot to start the stalling engine he showed no tension, no suspense even though he knew the soldiers with machine guns were hot on their tail. He just seem to be not there or at best just starring into space, which gave us an opportunity to see how much he's aged by the 7 season. The rest of the Part 1 goes down hill from there. And John Colicos just like Anthony Zerbe (two very exacting actors) in every thing I've ever seen them both in was not at all convincing and it was if he was calling in his part. Sadly, I did not stick around for Part 2, sad because the episodes are now dwindling down and I feel cheated, but nonetheless moved on to the next episode after Part 2.

Allies begins with a good premise, the rivalry between the Yanks and the Brits. On a personal level, having written a book called Zepka's War, parts of which take place in the hedgerows of France, I enjoyed watching the Germans get mowed down in what could have been some of those same hedgerows. But back to the movie. It's understandable that we will likely never see authentic WWII tanks in war movies these days, and that the uniforms will be questionable as to authenticity, but what I will never get used to, and for which there is no excuse, the need for injecting current terms such as "are we good?" are we good to go?" and "Roger that," into WWII films being made today. Are producers and directors really that stupid?