Non c'è tempo per morire

Tank Force is a curious combination of The Great Escape and Desperate Journey. Only four British prisoners one of them an American and another one a Pole, manage to escape in what should have been a more successful operation from combined German and Italian custody on the African front.

Leo Genn is one of the escapees and he's a strict by the book disciplinarian. Bonar Colleano plays the Pole who has enlisted in the British Army after his country surrendered. He's fighting his own private war with the Axis and does not take to discipline easily.

But in that regard he's nothing to Victor Mature. He's an American who was married to a Jewish wife and who tried to assassinate Joe Goebbels and escaped Nazi custody. When the Axis finds out Mature's in their custody, he has to escape and quick because he won't be treated like any other prisoner of war.

Desperate Journey was one of my least favorite Errol Flynn movies. It shows the Nazis as the stupidest kind of people imaginable. When the fantastic four of Mature, Genn, Newley, and Colleano escape in the African desert, both the Nazis and the Italians keep fumbling the capture. It was getting ridiculous after a while.

The quality of Mature's work went down considerably after he left 20th Century Fox for the most part and Tank Force is a prime example.

"Tank Force!" is an American paid for WWII programmer starring an aging Victor Mature and a supporting cast of of British stalwarts lead by Leo Genn the kind of English character actor who made many B movies that much more watchable.

The plot revolves around a prisoner of war camp in the Libyan desert populated by the usual stereotypes including the young, at the time, song and dance man, Anthony Newley. Five members of the camp belong to a tank battalion who at this juncture are obviously tankless,but being typical and jovial beyond reproach, break out and go wandering through the dunes looking for a safe place to crash. They find it in an old oasis hotel filled to overflowing with the usual churlish Nazi horde. And would you believe, an old girlfriend of Mr. Mature. She gives them food and water and is bumped off in a shorter order than it would have taken the kitchen to order up. Poor Luciana Paluzzo is kissed on the forehead, covered up with a blanket and left to find a job in a better flick than this one.

The five sand fleas wander off into the Libyan night pursued by Nazis and a nasty Arab chieftain. Everything deserty you can think of happens to them until they are caught. Old Vic endures the torture of a thousand knives until a nice German flings a map of dune country at them along with a loaded pistol.The kraut then turns and shoots himself undoubtedly disturbed by the insane torture perpetrated on Mr. Vic.

It all ends with a B movie finale as the proto Rat Patrol steals a German tank and kills everybody in sight.

A serviceable time waster, then, with opening and closing tank battles in 1958 widescreen and color. Hail Columbia! The movie company that is.

This is a film made here in the UK by Warwick Films,the partnership of Irwin Allen and Cubby Broccoli.They generally specialised in making up market action films in colour with an American star.In this instance it is Victor Mature who at 46 is a bit overage for any army let alone the British tank corp.His rational for being in the British Army is all a bit silly as is the script which at times seems to be a boys own adventure.He has the stoical Leo Genn in support.Anthony Newley,a rising star at the time is the cockney private,normally played by Sam Kydd,and in one of his last films,before his tragic early death,Bonar Celleano.The problem with the film is the star and the script.Otherwise it is entertaining.

A British tank unit is captured in the dark days of the North African campaign of the Second World War, including sketchy (by British standards) Victor Mature. He's there because his Jewish wife was killed by Nazis, so he tried to kill Goebbels. Also because they needed an American star for this British production to satisfy Columbia Pictures. Anyway, they escape and wander around Lybia.

Terence Young's movie is a disturbing mixture of standard tropes from POW movies, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, and bits that I have only noticed in THE GREAT ESCAPE. Perhaps they were stories floating around, perhaps the screenwriters (including Young) had read the memoirs, and perhaps Young was drawing on his own wartime experience, as he did with his earlier THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED. The mixture of cliches and oddities gives the movie and interesting but erratic pacing. Certainly the actors, including Leo Genn and Anthony Newly help, as does the brilliant on-site Technicolor camerawork by Ted Moore.

I caught this on TV under the title TANK FORCE. It's a British WW2 movie made up to look like an American film with Victor Mature as the imported lead and to the film's credit it always convinces as a bigger budgeted production. While scenes of tank warfare are limited to moments at the beginning and end, for the most part this is a fitfully exciting desert adventure with some suspense and incident to see it through.

The film features a mature Mature and a very good Leo Genn as allies who are sent to an Italian prisoner of war camp in North Africa and who vow to escape. The supporting cast is populated by the familiar faces of Anthony Newley, Percy Herbert, George Coulouris, and many others. Once the plot gets going it trundles along quite nicely with the usual run of plot twists, betrayals, and sudden death, and there's even time for a scene of romance or two here and there. Genn in particular is very good as the Brit with the stiff upper lip and the exciting climax rounds things off quite nicely.