They Who Dare (1954)

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

They Who Dare is directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Robert Westerby. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Akim Tamiroff, William Russell, Eric Pohlmann and Harold Siddons. Music is by Robert Gill and cinematography by Wilkie Cooper.It's "men on a mission" time as Special Commandos and some Greek partisans meet up on Rhodes to blow up two German airfields. And that's about it really, oh of course there's problems along the way such as questions of loyalty, hazards and set-backs such as minefields, and talking – lots of talking - as the men stand or sit around pondering the war and or - their own inadequacies etc. When the big action finale comes it is kind of worth the wait, but the performances are only adequate throughout and the script is lazily written to the point of tedium setting in. 5/10

"They Who Dare", which Lewis Milestone directed in 1953, comes across as a kind of preamble for "The Guns of Navarone" and was handsomely shot on location. It deals with the exploits of a small group of British and Greek soldiers tasked with blowing up German air bases on Rhodes but is rather lacking in action; most of the time is spent on the journey to the targets thought when the fighting does start it is lively enough. This is Dirk Bogarde in handsome, dashing leading man mode rather than Bogarde the actor he was ultimately to become and others in the cast include Denholm Elliot and Akim Tamiroff, though they are both wasted. It's hardly comparable to Milestone's other war movies but it's far from being a right-off either.

Off hand I can't think of a single plus point for this one other than the appearance of Gerard Oury in a supporting role. Oury continued to act throughout his life, long after he had added writing and directing to his repertoire and at least the scenes he is in here are watchable. Pretty-boy Dirk Bogarde turns in another Rank Charm School performance and leads the over-acting, encouraging the likes of Eric Pohlman, Denholm Elliot and Sam Kydd to go OTT. It's difficult to imagine that a plot like this - small team of commandos sent to Rhodes to blow up a couple of airfields - had any mileage left in it by 1954, unless you lavished more than a stick of gum on the budget and thought in terms of Guns Of Navarone. Even as a freebie with a daily newspaper it's not worth the price of admission.

World War II movie, of British production, which does not have anything that justifies the time one could possibly spare to see it, other than the great Dirk Bogarde starring, with the good British actor Denholm Elliott in a second role. The scenario is rather conventional (we have seen this stuff many times) and does not develop the characters and their relations as it could. It has also attempted to give a Greek aroma, in a very clumsy way: as there is not even one Greek actor among the cast the spoken Greek sound very strange (at least to someone who knows the language like me). Additionally, the portrait of the Greeks falls into a lot of stereotypes, which sometimes are offensive to these people, revealing more things about the script writer himself than the actual Greeks. I have given to this movie 4 out of 10.