Never So Few (1959)

Really Surprised!

Dreadfully Boring

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This could have been a good, although not great flick IF its producers had resisted including the mandatory "love story" component.Sinatra was a crooner, never an actor, who was able to get by and even be entertaining with a good supporting cast. He has one here with Steve McQueen as the standout.Gina Lollobrigida was never anything more than a pair of boobs with legs.These two could never have handled a GOOD script. Their personal chemistry was zero, and the painful, stilted meanderings that pass for their love scenes are downright painful to watch.Fortunately we now have the technology to spare ourselves such things. I gleefully advance through every scene with Old Blue-Eyes and Boobs Walking.Confine your viewing to Sinatra and his Kachins and you actually have a pretty good movie.

An allied guerrilla unit led by Capt. Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra) deals with the Japanese army and warlord controlled Chinese troops out in the Burma jungle."In the hills of North Burma, gateway to the vast prize of Asia, less than a thousand Kachin warriors, fighting under American and British leadership of the O.S.S., held back 40,000 Japanese in the critical, early years of World War II. It has been said NEVER have free men everywhere owed so much to SO FEW".Killer Warrants and The Unprecedented War.Directed by John Sturges and featuring Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Peter Lawford, Brian Donlevy, Gina Lollobrigida, Richard Johnson and Paul Henreid. Never So Few it's fair to say has a iffy reputation, originally conceived as a rat pack war film, it has some great strengths and some annoying weaknesses. The story itself is great, a part of the war that deserves to have been portrayed on the big screen, but why the makers didn't exorcise the whole romantic thread remains not just a mystery, but nearly a film killer.As lovely as Miss Lollobrigida is, her whole character arc, and the relationship with Sinatra's stoic Reynolds, is surplus to requirements. It serves absolutely no purpose to defining other characters or for narrative invention. This strand of the story carries the film to over two hours in length, without this strand it's a film of 90 minutes focusing on the brave souls who fought in the Burmese conflict. Which is what it should have been.When dealing with the conflicts, both outer and inner, the film does excite. The wily Sturges knows his way around an action scene and all the efforts here are gripping. Cast are fine and dandy, with McQueen dominating his scenes, Johnson the class act on show, while Sinatra, once he gets rid of the fake beard, shows his knack for tortured emotion to the point you just can't help but root for him even when he's being pig-headed (not a stretch for old blue eyes of course).Tech credits are mixed, the studio sets are easily spotted, but conversely so are the real and pleasing location sequences filmed in Ceylon. The Panavision photography (William H. Daniels) is beautiful, a Metrocolor treat, but Hugo Friedhofer unusually turns in a lifeless musical score. All told it's not hard to see why it's a film that divides opinions, it's very episodic and that romance drags it something terrible. But still strong merits exist and it at least gets the core of the real story out in the public domain. 6/10

Skip it – This was supposed to be a starring vehicle for Frank Sinatra. But this is romance, not war. There's some combat in the beginning and in the middle, but a lot of nothing the rest of the way. Sinatra's got a different rat pack in this one, made up of youngsters Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. McQueen steals the show in one of his earliest roles. But he's not in enough scenes, and the only action scenes are the one's he's in. The title of the film insinuates that never before has so much been owed to so few. That's funny, because never before have so few of my expectations for a good action movie been met. 3.5 out of 5 action rating

In and of itself, the idea of 97 lb. weakling Frank Sinatra playing an action hero is preposterous. I'm sorry but Mr. Sinatra might have struck a certain manly chord in a six hundred dollar suit, holding a highball glass and a smoldering Chesterfield but with his Hepburn neck and delicate shoulders he's miscast here. The plot, apparently based on some real life derry-do, is nonetheless implausible with Sinatra's ratpack jocularity trumping rank structure and cultural norms, as though he's holding forth at an after-hours Vegas smoker. The film further labors under sundry staging goofs and the otherworldly appearance of GinafrickingLollobrigida in a little black cocktail dress and stilettos. In the Burmese Theater of operations?? Oi! Suspiciously convenient for the Chairman of the Board, I must say. When Sinatra walks through a doorway and finds Gina in soft focus, heaving a throaty sigh and prancing around in those patent-leather pumps, I'm reminded of Billy Pilgrim rooting around on a chaise with Valerie Perrine in outer space. In one action shot, two trucks are running next to each other and the men in one truck are machine-gunning enemy troops by firing directly 'through' the other truck! No, I'm sorry Frank Sinatra is a little thin in the hips to be an action hero. Peter Lawford always looks like he's trying to keep up with Frank and Frank is delivering lines which would never fly except that he's Frank Sinatra. Basically a cartoon. What the heck were Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson doing in this movie?