FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE (1978)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Let's make something sparklingly clear: "Force 10 From Navarone" has absolutely nothing to do with "The Guns of Navarone." Its link to the original is merely tenuous, limited to a brief prologue where two of the main characters are shown to have appeared in the original when in fact, they didn't. They would be Robert Shaw and Edward Fox, but that is another story. As a fast-moving, escapist WWII adventure, "Force 10" is fun and preposterous.
Robert Shaw plays Major Mallory, a man with a game leg who walks around with a cane. Edward Fox is Sgt. Miller, a bomb expert who considers himself a civilian and no longer needed for his explosive efforts. Both have been commissioned by the government to find a Yugoslavian bridge vital to the Nazis and blow it up. This requires blowing up a nearby dam so it can send thousands of gallons of water to topple over the bridge. This is not necessarily Mallory or Miller's only mission - Mallory has to find a terrorist named Captain Leskovar (Franco Nero) and execute him ("Go out there and cope.") These two men will not travel alone - they will be occupied by Force 10, a commando group led by a pre-Indiana Jones Harrison Ford as military officer, Lt. Barnsby.
So "Force 10 From Navarone" has lots of derring do to appeal fans of war movies and grand escapist adventures. There are tense moments inside the bowels of the dam where our heroes have to plant the explosives, parachute from a burning plane, playing dead to the partisans, engage inlots of shootings, knife fights, explosions and endless double crosses. There is Carl Weathers as the tough medic who is a fairly adroit knife thrower. There is also Richard Kiel as a partisan who calls Carl Weathers' character "blackie." There is a Nazi commandant (Michael Byrne, playing the same role he later played in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") who has never heard of penicillin. And as for the babe factor and partial nudity, we have Barbara Bach as a "good soldier comrade." You get the picture.
"Force 10 From Navarone" is never really believable, has some anachronistic dialogue and doesn't come close to the scope, wit or punch of "The Guns of Navarone" (despite being written by the same author, Alistair MacLean). Still, it has some explosive moments of action, a game cast (it is fun seeing Harrison Ford share scenes with Carl Weathers and the late Robert Shaw), superb landscape photography and enough thrills to compensate for a somewhat threadbare plot. I enjoyed the movie when I was a kid and I still enjoy it now. Now go out there, rent the movie, and cope.
