Who Dares Wins (1983)

Pretty Good

A different way of telling a story

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This film may open with a CND peace march but things don't stay peaceful for long; one of the marchers is shot through the mouth by a sniper using a crossbow! It appears he may have been undercover as the security services clearly believe that a terrorist organisation is using a peace organisation called The People's Lobby as a front. In order to infiltrate the group it is arranged for SAS Captain Peter Skellen to be thrown out of the regiment so he can pretend to be sympathetic with the groups' cause. His approach is as subtle as a brick; he goes to an event put on by the lobby, walks up to its leader; Frankie Leith and proceeds to seduce her! He tells her that he is ex-SAS and she thinks he could be of use to them despite the objections of other members. By the time it comes for them to strike she is less sure but as the group has taken his wife and baby daughter hostage she is she he will do as he is told.Their immediate target is the house of the US Ambassador; he his hosting a dinner attended by the British Foreign Secretary, the US Secretary of State and the general in charge of Strategic Air Command... Frankie believes that with these hostages the authorities will have no choice but to give in to their demands. She informs the authorities that if the hostages are to survive a nuclear missile must be fired at the submarine base at Holy Loch... as the Secretary of State points out she is clearly insane. With such a crazy demand it is only a matter of time before the building is stormed by the SAS.This isn't a great film but it is a lot of fun; early action nicely introduces the key characters and grabs the viewers attention but after that is slows down somewhat until the terrorists get round to seizing the Ambassador's house. Things then get tense until it is time for the raid and that is the sequence that really makes the film worth watching. SAS Troopers abseil down from their Scout helicopters and land on the roof; these troops then lower themselves to the balcony before entering through the windows; meanwhile two more troops crash trough the windows and shoot terrorists while dangling beneath a helicopter! This action may have been a little exaggerated but anybody who has seen the news footage of the SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy will find it easy to believe. Lewis Collins was just right in the role of Skellen and Judy Davis was great as Frankie. The films main weakness was clearly the terrorists' demand; nobody would seriously believe they could force anybody to fire a nuclear missile and these characters all seem to think the plan will work... not one suggests it might not work! Still there is enough action to forgive this fault.

... just look at the poor Robert Webber character (great performance, once again!) who tries to wrestle a sub machine gun from one of the terrorists. Everything in this movie seems to be a little wrong. The biggest mistake in my opinion is the effort to give the action a firm footing in the actuality of the early 1980ies (the fundamental difference between this flick and the far more fantastic, ironic and therefore timeless Die Hard). The story comes through as a failed attempt to glorify the SAS commandos. Ideas like when a commando shouts „heads down" all good guys do it and all bad guys don't so that they can blast away ad lib (with a good conscience), that the main character does not get mown down by the gas masked commandos although he wears the same clothes and carries a weapon from their arsenal just seem to be unlikely and make it hard to take the movie seriously. And it just happens that it tries to be more than just fun. Don't talk about the toilet-mirror-signal episode ...I don't mind the criticism of the Pacifist movement as a shield for evildoers and the arguments between the peace fanatics and the settled, even headed representatives of power in this movie. But the political comment is rather lame and uninspired. This is insofar regrettable as the movie features an early performance of Judy Davies. She plays the main fanatic and seems to have done extensive studies on the „subject". Anyway, her performance is a notch above that of the others and somehow I feel the movie let her down.

When I rented The Final Option back on VHS in the early to mid 1980's. I had not idea how good the movie would be and it was a great movie.The action was cool and was seemed accurate also like Richard Widmark. The main SAS character (Lewis Collins) I had never seen before and when I saw this movie thought his acting was GREAT! When I rented it I lived in Norfolk, Virginia and now I cannot find the movie to own on DVD or VHS. Can anyone tell me where I can get The Final Option on DVD-Region 1 (USA) or even VHS (NTSC format)? I have been craving for this movie for years and I cannot find it anywhere! Please contact me at [email protected] if you can help, Thanks !!!!!!

The first 10 minutes of the movie, the introduction of the SAS is really good. But then, the story of "Who Dares Wins" becomes a bit boring until the last 20 minutes. Not that i am an action junkie, who needs an explosion every 2 seconds, but the story was so lame, that i needed ten cup of coffees to stay awake.But....At the moment the SAS assault begins, the movie rocks ! For me, the storming of the embassy is one of the best movie moments in my live and i love it every time i watch it. The great music by good old Roy Bud also fits perfectly. PS: Shame that Lewis Collins never became a big movie star !