Homens que São Feras

Low-budget, low-octane "thriller" directed and starring the old-sounding and tired-looking Richard Conte.

Set in Yugoslavia during WWII, a small band of American commandos is sent to rescue an American officer from a German fortress.

The movie follows pretty much the same plot as the far superior WHERE EAGLES DARE: the commandos' mission is botched immediately by a traitor in the midst of the good guys; some rescue attempts go wrong; and the whole mission turns out to be a fake for a completely different target, thus revealing the traitor.

OPERATION CROSS EAGLES is a pretty boring and obviously low-budget flick shot in Yugoslavia, where production costs were cheap and plenty of WWII-era equipment was (and probably still is) floating around. The story is familiar and presented drearily with no innovation whatsoever. This comes as no surprise as Conte directed the picture. It's his directorial debut, and he probably couldn't do too much out of the ordinary for a first venture and starring at the same time.

The cast - especially Conte and Calhoun - don't make very convincing soldiers, as they both look to be in their early 60s, but they appear perfectly comfortable in their roles. There are no preachy speeches to deliver, or moving dialog of any kind, but neither actor is really known for that sort of work. They're just ordinary guys having ordinary conversations and sound fine doing it. Relja Basic (THE FIFTH OFFENSIVE) is on hand as a nasty German Admiral, and has enough to do in a pretty predictable part. Demeter Bitenc (THE BATTLE OF NERETVA) pops up a few times as the bad guy.

There's enough cheap action going on to keep you interested, but not really glued. Nothing exciting and cool happens; but nothing utterly bad-looking happens, either. One long airplane strafing scene gets really, really monotonous and I seriously almost fell asleep. The cinematography is pretty slapdash, the music score is nothing special and the scenery doesn't do Yugoslavia justice.

Add to all of this a really stupid climax, which you don't even expect to happen when it does! And it's over so fast! I wasn't paying attention and had to rewind the tape to catch what happened. The story just abruptly ends and the movie is basically over. No loose ends to tie up or anything.

I saw this on an easy-to-find, out-of-print American NTSC video. It's pan and scan (the film was probably shot that way) and the colors are worn and very dull. There are plenty of typical scratches, speckles and such floating about. It's an average-quality video release of an average quality movie.

RATING: 5/10

An American Lieutenant and sergeant (Richard Conte and Rory Calhoun) help Yugoslav guerillas in 1943 at the southern tip of the Gulf of Trieste. Their goal is to kidnap a German colonel in exchange for an American captain, who happens to possess strategic Allied plans.

"Operation Cross Eagles" (1968) was obviously influenced by "The Guns of Navarone," just on a smaller budget with a Spaghetti Western edge. The focus is gritty action above dialogue, which results in several interestingly silent sequences. It was Conte's first and last directorial effort. That's a shame because he did an artistic job and was ahead of his time with the handheld "shaky cam" look.

If you're in the mood for a flick along the lines of "The Heroes of Telemark," "Hornets' Nest," "Hell River" and "Force 10 from Navarone," it delivers the goods. While nothing stunning and too shallow, it's dynamic and has its unique appeal.

The film is short 'n' sweet at 1 hour, 24 minutes, and was shot in Piran, Slovenia, which is on the coast of the Adriatic Sea by the border of northeastern Italy. Back then, it would've been northwestern Yugoslavia.

GRADE: B-

Richard Conte and Rory Calhoun and a mostly continental cast made Operation Cross Eagles over in Yugoslavia. As united Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito was charting its own course during the Cold War western films were finding it congenial territory to do some shooting there. Also Tito himself was looking to develop a Yugoslav film industry and B picture players like Calhoun and Conte were finding it harder and harder to get work in the USA. Conte also doubled as director.

I'm sure Conte didn't like the experience of directing because he never did it again. He and Calhoun look pretty bored the expressions of actors waiting for their paychecks to clear.

The setting of the film was the underground war in the Balkans. As we well know the British and American military never heavily invested in that theater. What participation there was came from organizations like MI5 for the British and the OSS for the Americans. Sterling Hayden actually did serve in that theater as an OSS operative.

Here we are concerned with the rescue of an officer in the British army who doesn't even sound British who knows the plans of Operation Cross Eagles the planned Allied invasion of the Balkans. As we know from history that never happened there must be more to it. There is.

But Conte directed a film that needed life support. It's dull and listless and a pale imitation of Guns Of Navarone in many respects.

For fans of Conte and Calhoun only.

OPERATION CROSS EAGLES is your usual low-grade Yugoslavia WW2 movie, following a tried-and-tested formula: bring in a pair of big-name but past their prime American actors, include a ton of repetitive action to take viewers' minds off the simplicities of the plotting, and let rip.

This one was shot in Slovenia and involves a squad of soldiers being sent on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. There's the usual twist in the storyline, but as with most things about this movie, it isn't very interesting. Western actor Rory Calhoun has a big role here, but the biggest name is an aged Richard Conte, who directs (for the only time in his career) as well as stars. To be fair, it's hardly a feather in the cap for either actor.

Richard Conte is generally an excellent actor, but here he is also the director, and the result is not very brilliant. It's a rather commonplace superficial guerrilla plot led by CIA (Richard Conte) to liberate a British captain in Nazi captivity, and there is a lot of gun-fighting, knife-throwing, killing and plotting especially involving two pretty girls, while the acting is generally quite casual and unconvincing, especially concerning the Nazis - there is actually only one, the admiral, who makes a very poor show. The camera work on the other hand is interesting, and the scenery is quite unusual for a war movie. The music is only there for the effects trying desperately to make the feature more interesting without really succeeding. Rory Calhoun is the other actor making a decent performance, but all the others are just types and no characters. The dialog is poor, but Richard Conte tries to make the best of it, but fortunately this became the only film he ever directed. He was better as an actor.