Review by denscul

This movie employs good actors, particularly some of the great English character actors of the time. However, the premise of the plot- one person changing identities with another, ruined the movie for me. What I don't understand, and wish some other movie buff could explain, how do writers get paid for stories when they show an complete lack of basic understanding of the military. Even way back in WWII, English soldiers were fingerprinted, and most soldiers wore their dog tags religiously, particularly those who served in combat. I would imagine a baron would be particularly concerned that his remains arrive back in the family plot. These two facts of military life were never explained. The final insult to our intelligence came when a uniform of a near comatose patient is presented in the court room. Since the war ended in 1945, and the setting of the movie was contempory (1959), 14 years had elapsed. What happened to the soldier's identification tags? What efforts had been made to notify the patient's family? In real life, the question of responsibility would have generated a search to determine whether the patient was a British soldier. The two main characters were captured at the evacuation at Dunkirk, often referred as the Miracle of Dunkirk because 400,000 soldiers did excape. The number of majors captured at Dunkirk would have been relatively small, and if a hospital was stuck with a patient for long term care, it stands to reason a serious effort would be made to determine who their patient was.