Published via Ecency

(source:tmdb.org)

Yugoslavia was one of the most popular shooting locations for films depicting the Second World War. It was also one of the most interesting battlefields of that conflict, but was never recognised as such by filmmakers, with the notable exception of the Yugoslav cinema industry, which developed its own subgenre of Partisan films. One of the rare Hollywood productions set in WW2 Yugoslavia is Force 10 from Navarone, a 1978 action film directed by Guy Hamilton.

The plot is based on the novel by Alistair MacLean, which was a sequel to Guns of Navarone, a novel adapted into the eponymous 1961 WW2 action classic. The film begins just at the moment Guns of Navarone ended and introduces the protagonists: Captain Mallory (played by Robert Shaw) and Corporal Miller (played by Edward Fox), members of a crack Allied commando unit that has just destroyed a strategically important German naval battery in the Aegean Sea. They are summoned for their next mission, which is to take place in occupied Yugoslavia; a dangerous German agent has taken the identity of Captain Lescovar (played by Franco Nero), a Yugoslav Partisan officer, and is wrecking Allied covert missions. Mallory and Miller are sent to kill him, but they must do it under the cover of assisting Force 10, a small unit of US Army Rangers led by Lt Col Mike Barnsby (played by Harrison Ford) whose mission is to destroy an important bridge and thus prevent a major German offensive against Partisan forces. Barnsby takes operational secrecy quite seriously and obtains transportation to Yugoslavia by stealing an RAF bomber; before take-off, he has to brawl with US military policemen, which provides a good opportunity for Sergeant Weaver (played by Carl Weathers), a detained black US Army medic, to win temporary freedom by boarding the plane. By the time they all land in Yugoslavia, many things go wrong, and they are soon greeted by a Partisan unit led by Captain Drazak (played by Richard Kiel), who later reveals himself to be the leader of a Nazi-collaborating Chetnik militia and turns them over to the Germans. Mallory and Barnsby must use all of their wits and deadly skills to set themselves free and continue with their mission.

Carl Foreman, screenwriter and producer of Guns of Navarone, had been trying to make a sequel for years, but his efforts bore fruit a decade and a half later, and by that time Gregory Peck and David Niven were obviously too old to play elite Allied commandos. Their replacements, although fine actors in their own right, weren’t the most fortunate casting choices. Robert Shaw was in very poor health during the production and it affected his performance. Edward Fox tried too hard to play Miller as a wisecracking, playful character who sees war as a boy's own adventure. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, plays his no-nonsense military character too straight, resulting in a not particularly memorable performance, just like Franco Nero, whose character hides his true loyalties with a blank face. Some casting choices are more unusual and more interesting – Carl Weathers as the single black man among the characters adds a little bit of racial themes to the plot, which is rather unusual for this sort of film. Richard Kiel, known as the formidable villain Jaws in James Bond films, is extremely menacing as the Chetnik leader, and the scriptwriter recognised that Weathers' character would be his prime adversary, resulting in a series of impressive fights between the two. Barbara Bach, who was quite effective as Bond girl Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me, is utterly unconvincing as a tough female resistance operative and is reduced to eye candy, especially in a nude scene that many viewers would find gratuitous.

Thankfully, Guy Hamilton, a director with an impressive résumé that included WW2 spectacles and James Bond films, handled Force 10 from Navarone quite well. The complicated and possibly confusing plot goes smoothly, while the mountain and forest locations (mostly in today's Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro) are put to good use, making some of the scenes almost western-like. Action scenes are effective and not repetitive, with Hamilton not sacrificing quality for the sake of quantity. The film acquits itself well at the ending, which combines suspense, drama, spectacular military action (aided by tanks and thousands of soldiers provided by the Yugoslav People's Army) and memorable bridge destruction. The latter was portrayed through special effects that were quite effective for their time, and they are in many ways effective even now.

Force 10 from Navarone is often unjustly viewed as an "unworthy" or inferior sequel to Guns of Navarone, but as a film in its own right, it stands the test of time just as well as its predecessor. Ironically, the country in which it was set doesn't exist any more, and most of the audience in its successor countries are completely unaware of its existence, partly because of decades of historic revisionism that turned WW2 winners into Bad Guys, and films like these being completely out of tune with new political paradigms. Because of that, the next war action film set in this part of the world during WW2 is most likely to be, just like this one, a foreign production.

RATING: 6/10 (++)