Operation Crossbow (1965)

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's 1943 Nazi Germany. The movie is split between the Germans working to built rockets and the British trying to stop them. First the Brits launch a massive bombing raid on Peenemünde. Then they send spies to infiltrate a secret rocket factory. Robert Henshaw (Tom Courtenay), John Curtis (George Peppard) and Phil Bradley (Jeremy Kemp) are parachuted into Germany given the identities of dead Dutch engineers. Bamford (Anthony Quayle) is an undercover German agent who returns to become a German security officer. Nora Van Ostamgen (Sophia Loren) is the wife of Curtis' dead Dutch identity and she wants him to sign some papers.It's a fictional accounting of the real Allied operations against the German rocket weapons program. There are limited scenes of the bombings. This is mostly a scheme to infiltrate the German base. The foreign characters speak non-English with subtitles. That accounts for large chunks of the movie. Sophia Loren's role is only a supporting one. Peppard isn't introduced until after 30 minutes. It's not a tightly written movie. There is some good tension. There is a giant set of the underground rocket base. This is more functional than anything terribly exciting.

I expected a lot more from this action movie.Firstly, There is way too much talking and sophia lorens scene is completely irrelevant, i think that whole sequence was shot purely for the excuse of having a famous actress star in the picture. The whole scene is like a long, boring intermission until George Peppard infiltrates the missile base.Another idiotic flaw is that for the first 45 minutes of the film, George Peppard has nothing to do with the film whatsoever and he doesn't appear for this amount of time after the film starts. If you didn't know what the rest of the movie was about you would think it was some sort of British army recruitment film. All it showcases is British intelligence officers argue and debate while the Nazis take turns at flying a V1.During the long, boring intermission, sophia lorens character gets randomly drunk and flirts with George Peppard. She is later killed by a member of the dutch resistance. Why this happened, i will never know, it was probably to stop her telling people about George Peppard or just an excuse for a small portion of action to break the dialogue. In my opinion, her character has nothing to do with the film at all.However, negative points aside, the beginning and ending of the film are excellent. The scenes at the start with the V1 flying through the sky and crashing and bursting into flames are visually impressive and very well shot. The end of the film, where George Peppard has infiltrated the missile base, manages to pack a bit of action into a boring film. It comes in the form of several Germans being shot to death with a machine gun and the base in later blown up and goes completely sky high. I was very pleased with this scene. Another action scene is where several V1s are launched and fly over to england. Some are blown up by cannons but some reach London and several houses are blown up. The film is worth watching for these three scenes alone, that is why i rated it a 7.Operation crossbow isn't a bad film, it quite good in some areas, but rubbish in others. I would still like to see it released onto DVD though. However, i still recommend you watch it if its ever on TV, just for the 3 scenes mentioned above. The film is talky and dialogue heavy, but I've seen worse.

Here we have a war film dealing with Nazi Germanys attempts to build and launch the dreaded V1 and V2 rockets.Lots and lots of superb well known faces here and quite a few more that ended up on the cutting room floor by all accounts.The good: Tells the story from both perspectives on one hand we have the dying Nazi war machine trying to build wonder weapons to bomb its way to victory and then we have Richard Johnson and John Mills desperately trying to launch bombing raids and spying missions to foil them while getting little help from ignorant Trevor Howard.Some good little plot twists such as the identity of man Tom Courtney assumes being wanted by the police which seals his fate due to another bit of bad luck. The fact the Germans really do speak German does help it to carry more wait rather than a load of actors talking with a silly accent. Keeps the tension going well for the most part and you do feel quite sorry for George Peppard and Jeremy Kemps characters as it dawns on them they will forfeit their lives for the mission.The Bad: Sophia Loren flouncing about with 60's hair and make up,she was added just to get a bigger audience. The scenes with her in are not needed and slow things down. Cheap editing trick of pasting in real war footage of aerial bombings and AA guns! Why do they do it? it never works and looks naff when you go from film quality to grainy footage some of it not even colour!One or two less than convincing models but we are talking early/mid 60's here so fares fare. Gearge Peppard was OK but the part needed more,to me he was out shone by Jeremy Kemp when they had scenes together.All in all a good film with lots of fine actors telling the story of another dark chapter of world war two.A lot better war film than the over hyped Guns of Navarone.

Operation Crossbow is a fine MGM film produced by Carlo Ponti and filmed at MGM's British Studios. Starring Sophia Loren, George Peppard, Richard Johnson, Tom Courtenay, and cameos by Lili Palmer et al, this is an exciting and well directed Film.Some may carp that Sophia Loren who has a cameo but is top billed. Ms Loren at the time was a huge International Movie Star of the first rank and also married to Carlo Ponti. In short Loren was cast as box office insurance. George Peppard is the real star of the film. Peppard had just scored a tremendous hit on loan out from MGM To Paramount in The Carpetbaggers and had a few months to run on his 7 year MGM contract. MGM cast George Peppard in this great film detailing the commandos who destroy a Nazi rocket factory to get one more Peppard film before George Peppard left MGM.I liked Richard Johnson a lot in this film as well as the veteran star Lili Palmer.Excellent World War II film as good as The Great Escape.