Les Combattants de la nuit

I had hoped from the opening sequence that it would feature the IRA in collaboration with the Nazis.However it developed in a different direction.Iit is just rather dull with little pace.

Although it wasn't my genre of preference, I loved watching The Night Fighters. Cute guys, cute accents; what else is there? Sure, there are some rebellious plots and shootings, but is anyone really paying attention to them? I was much more focused on Robert Mitchum, Dan O'Herlihy, and relative newcomer to the screen Richard Harris.

Dan is the leader of the IRA, but with his crippled foot, he isn't ever able to participate in their activities. He feels ashamed of it, and he feels he has to take drastic action to make up for it: joining the Nazi party. He thinks the IRA can just use the Nazis to help further their purpose, and when they have no further need of them, they can part ways. But some feel that's not a realistic approach. When Bob joins the rebellious group, does he do more than drink beer and make the girls swoon? He just might have some interesting ideas to contribute.

Ladies, if you like Irish accents and cute guys, go ahead and suggest this movie for your next date night. Your fellow will like the plots and violence, and you'll be kept pretty happy too. Next up, rent Ryan's Daughter for more of Bob Mitchum's adorable accent!

The Night Fighters makes use of Robert Mitchum's marvelous gift for speech mimicry as he adopts and Irish brogue for a film set in Northern Ireland in 1941. The brogue would be put to better use later on in a far better film, Ryan's Daughter.

To put in historical context, France has fallen and the British are waging war without allies on the continent for a year now. The Germans contact elements of the old Irish Republican Army and they're looking for a rising like Easter of 1916 that will drain British troops to defend the country and free the six counties who were left behind.

So the local commandant Dan O'Herlihy raises such a force in his local area and recruits buddies Robert Mitchum and Richard Harris for the group. They do a raid and one of their number is killed and Mitchum and Harris are fugitives. All the worse because as history records the Nazis never did attempt an invasion of Great Britain, they went to the Soviet Union instead.

Mitchum and Harris are a pair who would rather raise a tankard of beer than a country see this was for nothing. That leads to all kinds of complications down the road.

I'm not sure what the point to The Night Fighters really was. The film ending was anti-climatic to say the least. I will say that Mitchum's character had a lot of Victor McLaglen's Gypo Nolan from The Informer in him. The Night Fighters never reaches to the dramatic heights that the John Ford classic did.

In fact The Night Fighters is known primarily for the fact that after hours Robert Mitchum got into a pub brawl with some of the locals and he came out on top. Many different versions of the story got into the media around the world, but I suggest you read Lee Server's meticulously researched and delightfully written biography of Mitchum to get the real story. I can't repeat it here due to the language.

Mitchum fans might like The Night Fighters, but it will never be at the top of his best screen performances.

Robert Mitchum is an irish-man who joins the IRA during the WW2 era. They plan to fight the British while they're occupied with the Germans. Could have been a much better movie if the people didn't act so one- dimensional. I almost yawned a few times.

Where I saw it: Showtime Extreme (ironic, i know)

My grade: C-

You know what that means, two characters such as those one on a shooting, as Robert Mitchum with Stanley Baker during Bob Aldrich's THE ANGRY HILLS; I mean booze is never far from the "companionship" that may rise between the likes of Mitchum, Harris and Baker, so notorious heavy drinkers. And they were not the only ones.....So this Tay Garnet's film, as several from this same director, offer some John Ford's accents, elements: Irish, men's atmosphere, saloon fist fights. And there were not so many movies speaking if iRA in those days, the sixties decade. Good film but not my favourite from POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE director.