BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

TurboarrowIII A great cast cannot save this poor film. It is meant to be set in WW2 but everyone appears to have 1979 hairstyles and talk in 1979 language. It was meant to be tongue in cheek I think but it just comes across as over the top and not even remotely realistic.When the Germans are setting up their rocket towards the end the operators have crash helmets with obviously 1970's reflective mirror visors.None of the starry cast can really say they put in a half decent performance. Elliott Gould in particular hams it up for all he is worth and at least he looks like he had fun making it. Roger Moore as a German is not realistic either. At least he (sort of) attempted a German accent. Telly Savalas was maybe just getting over the disappointment of Kojak finishing as he was uncharacteristically poor in this. Even Richard Roundtree, so cool as Shaft, looks like he couldn't be bothered.Overall a poor film with poor performances and very much lacking in realism.

Leofwine_draca This rather feeble wartime thriller attempts to mix together fairly disparate elements: the liberation of a Nazi prisoner of war camp; the smuggling of fine Greek antiques; the development of a new Nazi ultra-weapon and an Allied invasion. It sounds all over the place and it is: the film adopts a jokey, lighthearted tone in spite of the subject matter that reminded me of KELLY'S HEROES – although this is far less successful.When the film's most memorable scene sees Stefanie Powers performing a striptease to a bunch of sweaty Nazis you know you're in trouble. Roger Moore, miscast as the world's most unconvincing German, doesn't help either and his supposed romance scenes with Powers felt sleazy rather than sweet. There's a past-his-prime David Niven looking desperately like he wishes he was elsewhere and Elliott Gould overacting as the token humourist. Richard Roundtree's presence is never quite explained and as for the pathetic Sonny Bono, the less said the better. The only one who comes out of this with any credit is Telly Savalas as the tough resistance leader; I loved his Greek dancing at the climax.On the plus side, the film's structured fairly well, with a series of increasingly fraught missions occupying much of the running time. It does take a while to get going, though. There's a claustrophobic motorbike chase about halfway through that marks a definite highlight, featuring some exceptional photography as the machines ride down narrow streets and alleyways. George Pan Cosmatos handles the proceedings with a certain efficiency to stop this from becoming a total dud, but it's still a disappointment.

intelearts Absolutely dreadful 70s mish mash of comedy and action - all overacted and under directed. This really has lazy written all over it - dialed-in performances and everything is done in a way that belittles everyone involved.The plot of a misfit gaggle of POWs on a Greek island with a benevolent German commandant (Roger Moore) who decide to rob a Monastery sounds good but the reality is just awful, and horribly banal.The whole film is not helped by occasional forays into a harder colder sadistic SS company who arbitrarily hang and shoot the Greek citizenry, and Telly Savalas as an ex-monk with too much testosterone is no better.Have to be honest and say this is probably my least favourite war film of all time - it just jars at every stage - even the great David Niven - who could make any line seem natural - seems totally bemused by the awfulness of the effort here. Maybe he did it out of paternal love for his son who co-produced this fiasco.I firmly believe this film was one of the main reasons Hollywood stopped making WWII films and started making Vietnam films, and on the evidence here who can blame them? Fantastic cast, awful, awful, awful film - not even worth watching on a cold, wet Autumn Saturday - honestly...Look and feels like an amateur holiday video... good luck enjoying this one!

bkoganbing Roger Moore is the Austrian commandant of a German POW camp located in the Grecian Isles in Escape to Athena. He's got a couple of favorites among the prisoners, an Italian cook in Sonny Bono, an archaeologist in David Niven and a black GI magician in Richard Roundtree. In addition USO entertainers Elliott Gould and Stefanie Powers are shot down in their transport plane and become Moore's prisoners.Moore really hasn't got his heart in the commandant business. He's an antique dealer in civilian life and he relishes the assignment only because of the location where he's also involved in Adolph Hitler's looting of Greek antiquities of which there are many in that area. Niven and company aid him because if they didn't they'd be in the hands of the SS. STill they want there freedom.Which they get when they join with resistance leader Telly Savalas and his mistress, bordello madam Claudia Cardinale. It's rumored there's a lot of hidden loot in a monastery on a nearby hill, whatever Moore hasn't taken for his own private stock for after the war. But Savalas is interested in some prototype V2 rockets located there.Escape to Athena mixes the plot elements of The Guns of Navarone and Topkapi, but they're not stirred too well. The scenery is quite nice and I'm sure the prospect of some paid time in the Aegean Sea might have been a big inducement for all these people signing on for the movie.As he was involved with Stefanie Powers at the time, William Holden gets a small unbilled cameo in a brief scene with Elliott Gould. As it turns out Moore's Prison Camp is also Stalag XVII. That might have been part of the package for Stefanie to go to Greece.It was also plain dumb to make Richard Roundtree a black GI. Americans were not involved in that theater, let alone black soldiers. Now if they had made his character be part of the African colonial troops of the British Empire, it would have made more sense. Then again we couldn't have heard Roundtree call a German soldier a 'cool cat'.The action sequences are done well enough, but the cast here just collected their paychecks and walked through the parts.