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ACTOR
Richard BurtonJohn ColicosClinton GreynWolfgang Preiss
DIRECTOR
Henry Hathaway
SYNOPSICS
Raid on Rommel (1971) is a English,German,Italian movie. Henry Hathaway has directed this movie. Richard Burton,John Colicos,Clinton Greyn,Wolfgang Preiss are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1971. Raid on Rommel (1971) is considered one of the best Drama,War movie in India and around the world.
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Raid on Rommel (1971) Reviews
Rushed and Poorly Produced WWII Fare
It's simply too bad that this movie was ever made. Okay, "Raid on Rommel" isn't the worst WII movie ever produced. Browse through some of my other reviews, and you'll soon learn that. The sad thing is, any middle-aged American man is liable to pick this one up off of the DVD rack at Suncoast like I did a few years ago and be shocked by how such a promising-looking movie turned into such a big letdown. Made in 1971, "Raid on Rommel" was originally planned as a made-for-TV special to make some more money off of the special effects sequences in "Tobruk", far too many of which were incorporated into this film. The far-fetched plot revolves around a British commando unit who have to sneak behind the German lines and blow up the shore batteries at Tobruk, allowing the British Navy to sail into the harbor unmolested and begin an attack. There's a lot more going to complicate matters, including the presence of a conscientous objector (Christopher Cary), an Italian prostitute (Danielle de Metz), Field Marshall Rommel (Wolfgang Preiss), and a zealous Nazi Captain (Karl Otto-Alberty). Non of these supporting characters are developed in the least, which is quite unfortunate - especially considering that the latter two are among the best "Nazi" character-actors to have ever graced the screen. Long on action and short on intelligence or flair, "Raid on Rommel" proves to be one immense bore from start to finish. The action sequences revolve almost completely around footage lifted from "Tobruk". This is probably because "Raid on Rommel" was shot on a shoestring budget. This shows up in that even actors from our film are substituted for by actors from "Tobruk" (there's a sequence where Burton's character is taking on a German tank, and whenever there is a cut to the "Tobruk" footage, it becomes jarringly obvious that the actor in the other shots is George Peppard rather than Richard Burton). Whole scenes, plot points and character traits seemed to lifted from "Tobruk", too, which was a real shame. Another deadly flaw in the film's execution is the poor choice of casting Richard Burton in the lead. I've never been a fan of Burton. His work in "Where Eagles Dare" was entertaining and fun, but nothing to stand up and applaud for. Here, he doesn't even put an effort into making his role convincing. He sleepwalks through most of his scenes; there are a few points where he calls characters by other characters' names or by the actor's name. Even on DVD, the non-English sections of the film (and there are several of them) are not supported by subtitles, making it almost impossible to tell what is going on between the characters. There are key discussions between Rommel and Captain Schroeder which lead up to the climax, and I could only understand snippets of these scenes thanks to a semester of college-level German. I had always considered Henry Hathaway a great director; after all, he was the brains behind the John Wayne classic "True Grit", one of my favorite westerns. The rest of the crew had experience limited to other low-grade movies or fairly strong TV series. At best, "Raid on Rommel" plays like an extended episode of "The Rat Patrol" and just cannot be taken seriously as a feature film. See "Tobruk" instead. 4/10
A really bad movie
The history is wrong. The props are inaccurate. The story is over the top derring do nonsense. It was the presence of Richard Burton that drew me to this turkey. Alas, it must have been his worst role. I fail to see how any film maker can be so careless with his subject and so contemptuous of his audience. The Germans did not use flying boats and certainly not in the desert. The Wehrmacht did not use the type of campaign ribbon shown on the German uniforms. There are no puffy white clouds over the Libyan desert. Edward R. Murrow's CBS broadcasts could not have been heard in Africa. And on and on and on. Nor have we even approached the absurd plot, complete with an Italian bimbo and a philatelic Erwin Rommel. Or the very chintzy special effects. Nope. My one line summary says it all. A really bad movie!
Reasonable desert war movie
There are a lot of bizarre chains of circumstance which set up the plot of this. People just happen to have talents and interests which assist the plot, others have very improbable reasons for being where they are, and so on. But if you can forget about the artificially convenient, this is a pretty good tale, pretty well told. A medical corps unit, and some of its patients, who start out as captives, end up, under the leadership of Richard Burton, being a commando team who play a vital part in the assault on Tobruk. Oh, and there's a girl in there somewhere. There are plenty of tense moments, adventures, incidents, and so on. People get shot, things get blown up, the Germans are uniformly stupid except for Rommel, the military genius. It's got all the ingredients (even if it did borrow some of the more spectacular explosions and so on from another movie), and the actors are as convincing as they can be given their improbable backgrounds. A perfectly enjoyable, inconsequential, undemanding movie which makes two hours or so pass pleasantly enough.
The Shakespearean Action Hero
Looking at the criticisms of poor Richard Burton for taking a role in Raid on Rommel makes me want to put a word in for him. Acting was a craft as well as an art to him, it's how he made his living. I'm sure he got a good pay day out of Raid on Rommel. I think he also wanted to try the action genre as well. He made a much better choice with Where Eagles Dare though. It's a poorly conceived story from start to finish. Someone in Allied Headquarters in London had the brilliant idea of freeing a bunch of captive commandos in North Africa and send them on a mission to Tobruk to spike some harbor guns. Same idea as in Guns of Navarone. So Burton gets the job. But upon executing the escape he discovers he has freed a bunch of medical personnel and hardly enough commandos. Never mind he uses what he has. His mission is to blow up those guns, but on discovering a fuel depot for Rommel he makes a little side trip to blow it up. Hello, but I think he was compromising the mission he was sent on. Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to do the job you're assigned to and then when you got out you tell headquarters and they do another mission? That makes more sense to me. The fuel depot sequences and the finale with the guns at Tobruk harbor are taken from the Rock Hudson film a few years earlier. Burton gives a rather pedestrian performance as does the rest of the cast. By the way as if our heroes didn't have enough on their hands they're also transporting the mistress of an Italian general. That man wasn't going to sacrifice any of the comforts of the homefront. They keep her all doped up and at one point, one of the commandos decides to sacrifice for king and country and give his all for the mission. Just who was the dope who thought her up?
Who makes these decisions ?
What an awful mish-mash of a movie. Lacking direction, mediocre acting, appalling editing. One wonders who approves the making of films like this. I can't even put this kind of propaganda in context (1971)- hooray the West democracies can win sometimes ? Surely movie-makers have some respect for their craft, and even with low-budget pot-boilers they'd bother with script,continuity,plot and character development ? Why were the (British) propaganda war films during, and just after, World War 2 so sophisticated and nuanced and yet so many rubbish war films made from the 1970s onwards ? So much for the linear-development of cinema as art. Some genres have 'naturally' petered out, such as Westerns. Hollywood only rarely re-captures the wit and humour of pre-war rom-coms. "Art house" films are mere pretension and few are both experimental and touch the audience. "Serious" war films are one-dimensional. This film doesn't pretend to be serious, but really...it should never have been made.