Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

weezeralfalfa This film primarily hopes to provide remembrance for one German soldier(name changed) who, as a POW, accepted the challenge of going on spy missions requested by the Americans. The story supposedly is largely based on fact. He was dubbed Happy, and said his motivation was to help a little to bring the war to an end a little quicker. We follow him on one mission, in which he was supposed to find out where the 11th panzer division was located. He dressed as a German airman, with a red cross on his arm, to indicate he was a medic. Simultaneously, another POW: dubbed Tiger, went on another mission with American Lt. Rennick, who had picked the men to go on these missions. I would have liked to go into more depth in how the successful candidates were picked. Happy was picked partly because he seemed honest. Another(Tiger) was picked because he was reckoned to be a good liar and because he was familiar with the area. He would prove to be cowardly when it came to swimming the Rhine, to get back to the American position with the info they had learned(Their radio had been damaged, hence they couldn't relay the info that way.) Hence, Rennick shot him in the back to make sure he didn't divulge their info.......The movie was made while there were still some bombed out structures remaining, and still a good amount of German war machines around. Thus, it was made more authentic than it could have been at a later date. Often, fires were burning in rubble and still standing buildings, although they mostly looked artificial. Most film footage evidently was shot in Wurzburg, with some in Munich.....Some German soldiers, including some POWs, were sensitive to the suggestion that the war was lost. Thus, the soldier who was brought by Rennick in his jeep, along with the future Happy, was pushed out a second story building by some POWs, for voicing this opinion. Also, SS transporter Schultz, in conversation with Happy, got very angry when Happy voiced this opinion. But young widow Hilde just wanted the war over with, pouring out her heart to Happy, after coming to his room with some things he had left. ..... The most exciting part is the last part, where Happy is running for his life, from German soldiers who detected something phony in his check in . He subsequently managed to find Rennick and Tiger in a mostly bombed out building. I'm not clear how he was given their location. A another moment of terror occurred on the small island in the Rhine, where they swam to, which was crawling with German military. See it at YouTube

RondoHatton "Decision Before Dawn" is a great flick, starring Richard Basehart & Oskar Werner. It was one of the first movies shown on NBC's Saturday Night At The Movies in 1961. Basehart & Gary Merrill give their usual solid performances, and Oskar Werner as the doomed Allied agent is excellent. I was 9 or 10 when I first saw it, & rented the VHS tape almost 30 years later, and was overjoyed to see how well it had stood the test of time. I was also able to rent at this video store in Eureka, California a couple more of the "Saturday Night At The Movies" offerings from back then were "The Day The Earth Stood Still"(total classic, of course) , and "Destination Gobi".......it was fare like this that spoiled me when Saturday nights on NBC got polluted with "Movies Of The Week" garbage like McCloud & others.

JohnHowardReid This is one of Fox's semi-documentaries, complete with the usual Foreword informing us about real people (only their names have been changed) caught up in real events. Aside from the German players – Hans Christian Blech is excellent as usual and so is O.E. Hasse – speaking English to each other, the movie is grimly realistic. Although no expense has been spared, tension does tend to be dissipated by the movie's long running time and thus lose some of its initial promise and impetus. The movie is more a picaresque study of Oskar Werner's adventures through war-torn Germany in 1944 than the suspenseful spy yarn initially promised, although it still carries plenty of excitement. Perhaps Werner's hero is too youthfully deferential to excite full audience identification. We usually like our main character to be made of stronger stuff like Richard Basehart and Gary Merrill. In fact, although first-billed, Basehart disappears from the action for far too long, It's too lengthy a hiatus before he finally reappears in time for the chase climax. Nevertheless, there are scenes that jolt the eye and ear along the way, along with thousands of extras. And it's all brought to life unobtrusively yet masterfully by director by Anatole Litvak, and superbly photographed by Franz Planer.

Robert Charles Don't know how anyone misses this or rates it less than a 7 even if you hate war,old, or even 'guy' films, whatever. Check the writer (OSS experience as German émigré, AND brilliant screenwriter), director, and uh, oh yeah..Best Picture nomination? Drama as realism, almost documentary. Filmed entirely in Europe in 1950/1. No postcards like this.Casting is strong and lack of facetime from big stars makes it all the more real. Cinematography effective, sets courtesy of 8th Air Force and Nazi disaster. True story with enough facts to make it hard to criticize, although a little hard to swallow the very end. Simple dialogue, washed out souls, the ugly and sad situation of German nation as war wound down is very painful, even if backdrop to underlying Allied victory story.Special shot -- 12minutes in catch 10 seconds of baby-(crazy-)faced Klaus Kinski as rejected 'traitor' POW. He was 24 and just starting in films, shortly after skipping out of hospital, from his first bout with "schizophrenia"