A jag from Ice Cold in Alex (1958) via director J. Lee Thompson and Anthony Quayle. Also for Anthony Quinn who has some fun in a minor role as a Greek Cretan who cannot say no to Irene Papas (his co-star in Zorba the Greek (1964), Z (1969)). Carl Foreman (High Noon (1952), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)) adapted Alistair MacLean's novel.
Expert mountain-climber Gregory Peck ended up leading a small band of British Army irregulars in an assault on, well, the fictional guns of Navarone during World War II. David Niven went along as an explosives expert, Quinn as an indestructible one-man army, Papas as the daughter of the local rebel who leads them across the Aegean island. James Robertson Justice brought the tonsils to the introductory framing, Allan Cuthbertson some plummy what-ho. Richard Harris has a cameo as an Australian pilot; his accent was middling. Lengthy and things go as they must. Nobody is particularly age appropriate except perhaps the ladies (Papas and Gia Scala).
Bosley Crowther. A band of boring heroic stereotypes. IMDB trivia: the mountain-climbing bit was totally faked. Harrison Ford starred in the sequel Force 10 from Navarone (1978).
Sometimes I get a bit curious about what Guy Ritchie has been doing but usually the reviews scare me off. This one is even less fun than Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre (2023). I wish he'd spent a bit more money/time/neurology on researching the business and legal stuff as what he served up is pure gibberish. The plot is nonsensical as his analysis of the interests and leverage of the various parties is fallacious. The first hour is pure exposition, and a lot of that is about logistics; the movie proper doesn't really get started until the last thirty minutes. (I think the idea is that we're supposed to enjoy Eiza González as a clothes horse / girlboss alongside the witless banter between male models/Arnies Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal.) It struck me that he could've just made a making-of or documented the day-to-day lives of his producers and financiers.
The one thing that made me pay some attention was a scene where Rosamund Pike tells the boys "you do the dancing, I'll do the thinking" — which, to complete the Samuel Beckett reference, is the natural order. Unfortunately her part is totally irrelevant, as is Carlos Bardem's.
Glenn Kenny at the New York Times: just winnowing the herd of less good-looking guys. The A-Team (2010): and wasn't I just wishing that Copley would phone in from somewhere.
And yet more Alejandro G. Iñárritu completism. He co-wrote and directed. Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone helped with the writing. The trio were more successful with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014).
Lengthy. This one wasn't for me. Javier Bardem led as a bloke in Barcelona who gets a terminal cancer diagnosis. He has two kids with his bipolar wife Maricel Álvarez who he is semi-separated from. He makes his money from various immigration-related arbitrages, specifically via a Chinese labour arrangement and by paying off the cops for a group of Senegalese street sellers. Almost all of it goes predictably and predictably wrong. Many of the secondary characters are more intriguing than the central focus but lack depth and development. There's a supernatural element that seemed tacked on.
Perhaps it functions as a time capsule for Barcelona.
Roger Ebert: three stars and a shrug. Dana Stevens: "This forced march through a chamber of personal and sociological horrors is difficult to endure but easy to forget."
