American fly-boy (Sinatra) gets shot down and sent to grimy POW camp full of smelly Brits, including cranky Trevor Howard. The Brits are trying to escape, naturally, but here's a fun twist -- Sinatra takes over as superior officer and immediately calls a halt to escape attempts.
Now, that right there could make for an interesting movie. Granted, it would have been an arthouse movie like The Hill. Even after they lam it from the camp it still have potential to be an interesting cat-and-mouse affair.
Alas, the action sequences just get more and more improbable, often relying on the bad guys (here the Germans) have no peripheral vision or hearing ability.
I had no trouble believing Sinatra as the pilot of Howard as the crankypants. But the cheap theatrics combined with some truly awful green-screen photography sink this movie in the second half.
Maybe Sinatra spent too much money on whiskey and broads and the producers ordered the thing wrapped up in time for a Christmas release.
Von Ryan's Express
(1965)
Turned an interesting premise into an implausible escape film
28 August 2019