Raid on Rommel (1971)

Strong and Moving!

Memorable, crazy movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is one of these films that often crops up when someone brings up the topic of worst war films . It probably doesn't deserve this reputation but there's no denying it drowns in a sea of mediocrity . From the outset there's a major spanner in the works with its setting of Libya in 1943 where radio broadcasts talk of the Battle for Tobruk . The film never states when in 1943 it's set but this doesn't matter because the battle for Tobruk took place the previous year and by 1943 Rommel was on the back foot and not as this film suggests on a knife edge between victory and possible defeat . The outcome of the North African campaign was certain in 1943 , especially with the Operation Torch landings in November the previous year . One can understand some artistic license in making the stakes some what higher but not to the point of rewriting history . Wouldn't have just been easier setting the film some time in early 1942 when things were far more uncertain ? Richard Burton even today is a legend of British stage but his career arc in cinema left a lot to be desired and he's obviously slumming it big time here . One wonders if he's trying to emulate the success of WHERE EAGLES DARE where is character is on a top secret mission to defeat the Nazis . The problem is the top secret plan is a bit to similar to a previous and much better film called TOBRUK and if this wasn't bad enough RAID ON ROMMEL makes use of footage from TOBRUK very blatantly which leads to several instances of confused continuity and is a distraction . It also explains why Burton has his hair bleached since the climatic battle scene is culled from TOBRUK where blond haired George Peppard takes on some German tanks . As a footnote the continuity announcer pronounced the title as " Rain on Rimmill " which whilst being some what surreal sums up the carelessness of this movie

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.

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.

OK WW2 actioner if it didn't steal all of its action footage from much better film " Tobruk " which makes this a bootleg rip-off for anyone who may have paid either to see this in a theater or rent the video. Don't bother just watch Tobruk instead.