Fairly typical Italian war movie, yet entertaining enough for the most part
During the latter days of World War II, a British Special Forces unit is sent behind enemy lines to destroy a dam key to the German war effort.
It wouldn't be unfair to describe Churchill's Leopards as a pretty standard entry from the Italian war movie cycle that was popular circa late 60's. After all it focuses on a crack team of soldiers on a dangerous, borderline suicidal mission. Not only that, it features an even more specific detail that films from this sub-genre often bizarrely used - the lookalike who is used to fool the Germans. Movies such as When Heroes Die (1970) and Casablanca Express (1989) also used this slightly ridiculous gimmick. Richard Harrison is the guy here who plays the dual role of a British soldier pretending to be his identical brother who happens to be a Nazi officer, although the latter is admittedly killed within the first five minutes by a partisan woman, leaving the door open for the English brother to saunter in and take his place - completely silly of course but par for the course when it comes to Macaroni Combat movies. Another regular feature seen here is Klaus Kinski as a ruthless SS officer, although rather stupidly they have this German baddie dubbed with an English accent which makes no sense and unfortunately reduces his potency on screen somewhat. I found this one to be overall not too bad for this kind of thing. I've found these Italian war movies to not be exactly a guarantee of quality, with the majority hovering around the mediocre end of the scale. This one ultimately is no different although I did think it set things up slightly better than most. The best scene has to go to the tense, well-handled part where the Nazis gather a group of French citizens on a picturesque mountain in order to be executed as revenge for the killing of two of their men. This scene is paced really well and does have some good tension; it shows that it's more low-key moments such as this that can have more impact than the more typical, and a bit tedious, gun battles that seem to be part of the formula for this kind of thing and which compromise the latter stages of this one too. Events ultimately culminate perhaps unsurprisingly with the dam explosion, which most people seem to think was terrible but which I actually thought was pretty good.
It wouldn't be unfair to describe Churchill's Leopards as a pretty standard entry from the Italian war movie cycle that was popular circa late 60's. After all it focuses on a crack team of soldiers on a dangerous, borderline suicidal mission. Not only that, it features an even more specific detail that films from this sub-genre often bizarrely used - the lookalike who is used to fool the Germans. Movies such as When Heroes Die (1970) and Casablanca Express (1989) also used this slightly ridiculous gimmick. Richard Harrison is the guy here who plays the dual role of a British soldier pretending to be his identical brother who happens to be a Nazi officer, although the latter is admittedly killed within the first five minutes by a partisan woman, leaving the door open for the English brother to saunter in and take his place - completely silly of course but par for the course when it comes to Macaroni Combat movies. Another regular feature seen here is Klaus Kinski as a ruthless SS officer, although rather stupidly they have this German baddie dubbed with an English accent which makes no sense and unfortunately reduces his potency on screen somewhat. I found this one to be overall not too bad for this kind of thing. I've found these Italian war movies to not be exactly a guarantee of quality, with the majority hovering around the mediocre end of the scale. This one ultimately is no different although I did think it set things up slightly better than most. The best scene has to go to the tense, well-handled part where the Nazis gather a group of French citizens on a picturesque mountain in order to be executed as revenge for the killing of two of their men. This scene is paced really well and does have some good tension; it shows that it's more low-key moments such as this that can have more impact than the more typical, and a bit tedious, gun battles that seem to be part of the formula for this kind of thing and which compromise the latter stages of this one too. Events ultimately culminate perhaps unsurprisingly with the dam explosion, which most people seem to think was terrible but which I actually thought was pretty good.
- Red-Barracuda
- Jun 19, 2017