#89: THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

5.5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

No, first time

BEST SEQUENCE

The cliff-climbing scene is quite memorable, filmed without any dialogue at all, with only the sounds of the wind howling and the waves crashing in the background. The first action scene, when the heroes' ship is boarded by Nazis, was also a good burst of excitement early in the movie

BEST LINE

Nothing really stands out in my memory. If I picked a line, it would just be for the sake of doing so

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

92%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Bolstered by a cast of memorable stars and an impressive sense of scale, The Guns of Navarone fires with vivid characterization and entertaining spectacle."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers."

THOUGHTS

• The word that kept coming to mind was "stodgy". I liked the concept, a group of soldiers going undercover to travel the length of a Greek island and attack a fortress, and I found the setting very appealing, but I was a little underwhelmed by the plot, the action and the characters
• Gregory Peck really was a marvelous leading man, though. He's handsome and stoic as ever
• The island of Navarone doesn't actually exist, but it's meant to be a Greek island in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. This provides a setting which is unique to this movie, at least compared to the other war movies I've seen. The heroes climb cliffs and travel through mountains and valleys, they camp out in ancient Greek ruins, there are some great shots of boats sailing through open water with no land around for miles, and I especially liked the shots of German soldiers marching through tiny Greek villages. The setting will be my main takeaway from this movie
• Beyond that, things were just kind of generic. And at the risk of sounding like the grandson from The Princess Bride, I found it kind of silly when Gregory Peck had a kissing scene with a Greek resistance fighter. There was no character or plot reason that I can think of for this movie to have a kissing scene
• I've seen my fair share, but these days, war movies aren't really a genre I actively seek out. We've already had a few on the AFI list, and we're going to have a few more. The Guns of Navarone is fine as a war movie, but for me, that's ultimately all it is. A competent war movie, and I'm glad I've now seen it, but I doubt I'll be coming back to it anytime soon. At the risk of showing my hand, though, I'll point out that the highest-ranked war movie on this list is The Great Escape, at #19, a movie which I love and which transcends the war movie genre, in my opinion (and at this rate, which we'll be talking about in, like, 2 years)
• Finally, I'll leave you with this: when this movie came out, in 1961, the main trio of Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn were 45, 51 and 46, respectively. According to IMDB trivia, for this reason, when it came out the British press nicknamed this movie Elderly Gang Goes Off to War. And I think that might just be the funniest thing I've ever heard

Up next: 12 Angry Men from 1957