Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

blanche-2 "Operation Amsterdam" from 1959 stars Peter Finch, Alexander Knox, Tony Britton and Eva Bartok in a Rank film based on a true incident. In 1940, there was a British move to get industrial diamonds out of Holland so that the Germans could not make use of them.A British Major (Britton) travels to England with two diamond experts (Knox and Finch) to persuade diamond merchants in Amsterdam to give over their industrial diamonds, which would be brought to England.There is danger all around them, with soldiers, shootings, and bombings everywhere. At a harbor, a young woman, Anna (Eva Bartok) tries to drive into the water to commit suicide after her fiancée's parents are killed, as she blames herself for inadvertently causing their death. The men are able to stop her and make use of her car, and her knowledge of Amsterdam, all the while not sure if they can even trust her. No one, in fact, can trust anyone, since German parachuters are disguised as Dutch soldiers.Jan (Finch's) father, who is a diamond merchant in Amsterdam, appeals to his circle to relinquish their stashes so that the major and the men can bring them to a destroyer on which Churchill is allowing them to travel. The time is short -- will the merchants cooperate? Or have they come a long way for not very much? I found this film very exciting and very moving. The atmosphere was tense throughout. Peter Finch gives a wonderful performance as Jan, and he was so handsome and had good chemistry with the beautiful, mysterious Anna of Bartok. Alexander Knox seemed to be an afterthought, not given much to do.Knowing what the Dutch suffered during the war made this an emotional experience watching the courage of the people who helped the men along the way. This wasn't the officially formed resistance, but an earlier group who didn't want the Nazis in Holland and probably were the core people when the official Resistance began.Highly recommended. I think the story is compelling enough to overcome editing criticisms, the time of release criticisms and the like. Powerful stories are timeless.

MartinHafer From a purely historical point of view, "Operation Amsterdam" is a really cool film. That's because most movies about WWII focus on big, loud and obvious topics--like battles. However, "Operation Amsterdam" is instead about an equally serious problem--what to do with all the diamonds (particularly the industrial grade ones) in Amsterdam--the capital of the diamond industry. This is because lots of war-time machinery (such as precision drill bits) depended on these diamonds and the British were scared the Germans would confiscate them when they overran Holland in 1940.As far as the film itself goes, it is mildly interesting and has some very tense moments. My only reservation is that the film, at times, seems a tad bland. While it stars Peter Finch--a rather distinguished Oscar-winning actor. Here, however, he isn't given a lot to do other than hide from Germans and Nazi sympathizers. This is not a huge complaint, but the overall film is a bit on the sterile side. Worth seeing, yes, but not a rousing adventure, that's for sure.

manuel-pestalozzi The movie makes the best out of a fairly unique story that is probably based on true historical facts. It is about a one day expedition to Amsterdam in May 1940, shortly before the arrival of the invading German troops. In a race against time exiled Dutch jewelers try to get all the industrial diamonds out of the country and bring them to Britain before the Germans can take them. It is a quick in and out operation organised by the British government that has to be accomplished in one day - and no easy task as the jewelers have to be convinced by sheer argument it is the right and sensible thing to do (hard to decide in the Netherlands in May 1940, I am certain).In a strange way this movie is surrealistic and realistic at the same time. There is a lot of good location shooting, the sun drenched streets of Amsterdam are virtually deserted, the atmosphere is ghostly. At times there is gunfire in the distance. There are some disoriented Dutch soldiers hanging around, or shall I say loitering? The effect is strangely threatening. At one time two groups of soldiers start shooting at each other. In another scene, one of the day trippers steps into a pub in a totally empty square. And there they are, the Dutch! Sitting peacefully behind their pints and discussing the latest news from the front. The transition really took me completely by surprise, it was incongruous but strangely effective and somehow totally believable.There are harrowing scenes. When the day trippers disembark, the harbour is in chaos and full of refugees – a strong contrast to the mentioned deserted streets in the town center. When they finally succeed in organising a meeting with all of Amsterdam's important jewelers, their Jewish colleagues express the opinion that for them it might be wiser not to make the Germans angry by giving away the jewels. They can be convinced to agree to the evacuation of the stones that are invaluable to the armament industry, although it is made perfectly clear that the day trippers can take no refugees with them. All these issues are treated in a rational and unemotional way which actually strengthens the impact of the tragic situation.In addition the movie also has some action scenes, a car chase and, as the culmination of the absurd general situation, the heist of a jewel depository by partisans who help the day trippers, with an ensuing fierce shootout with a detachment of Dutch troops. The acting is good, Peter Finch (Network) is cool as usual and gives a convincing performance as the son of an eminent Amsterdam jeweler and leader of the expedition. Eva Bartok is stylishly beautiful and enigmatic as a Dutch woman with uncertain alignments who joins the day trippers after they saved her from a suicide attempt (driving her car over the pier in the harbor, a car, incidentally, that comes in mighty handy). So, a hell of a lot goes on in Operation Amsterdam.

Piafredux 'Operation Amsterdam' is one that had gotten away from me. I thought I'd seen just about every WWII movie that ever was. So when I came across it on DVD, I felt nicely piqued.And when I watched it, I felt nicely surprised, decently entertained.The plot isn't terribly exciting, the script could have benefitted from a wee bit of polishing, but the production works well because tension is strung taut and relaxed, and strung taut and relaxed again and again throughout the film.Peter Finch and Alexander Knox are two Dutch diamond experts who sail in a British destroyer with an English secret agent: destination Amsterdam. Mission: come out, before the Nazis surround or take the city, with the Dutch inventory of industrial diamonds. Object: deprive Nazi war industry of the tool-cutting, metal-shaping worth of those diamonds.In the haunting desertion of orderly Amsterdam streets, the intrepid trio meets with Dutch diamond merchants, scampers in and out of the clutches of Dutch fifth columnists, mucks in with Dutch resistance fighters, and warily accepts guidance throughout from a Dutchwoman whom they cannot, at first, trust (played with restrained charm by Eva Bartok). Some of the diamond merchants are, as they've always been in Amsterdam, Jews. The point is made about Nazi persecution of Jews and about the dilemmas many Jews faced when the Nazis occupied their countries, but in 'Operation Amsterdam' the points are made unsentimentally - which highlights the stark panic, fear, and despair many Jews felt in that baleful time and circumstance. Indeed, throughout the film characters are beset by choices, choices they must make because time, as the story development lets us know clearly, is running out for everybody in the Netherlands.It's the storytelling and the actors' understatement - nothing is James Bondish about these ordinary characters finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances - that make the story absorbing, believable. Abetted by the unsettling counterpoint between carnivalesque Dutch pierement (organ grinders) music - happy music playing in a bleak city, over throngs of departing refugees, during the agents' tense search for and gathering of the diamonds - and by terse snare drumming, the story keeps ratcheting up its grip on the viewer, holding tight tempo with the agents' mission and their dedication to accomplishing it.The only serious flaw in the film's visuals owes to most of the deserted street shots having to be filmed immediately after dawn (else Amsterdam's population would be thronging its thoroughfares). This yields a bit of a crazy quilt mix of shots having long shadows intercut with shots having midday, short shadows - supposedly happening in the same instant. Otherwise, the camerawork and editing jive nicely with the unfolding of the plot.Also ramping up the tension is the script's bareness: one really must think a lot - sometimes too much - about what's going on, about what's coming next, but the need to think that way lends the viewer a heightened sense of uncertainty, danger, and dread. It also helps that the scriptwriter avoided the worst cliches of the genre: the scenes of Eva Bartok and Peter Finch are treated as bare-bones, wartime heartbreak rather than as apocryphal "we fell in love in battle" nonsense.Generally, props are first-rate, except for Dutch soldiers and resistance fighters toting German MP-40 machine pistols which were in short enough supply in the 1940 Wehrmacht, and for a few 1950's-era military trucks. The other weaponry is all true to period: Dutch army M1895 Mannlicher rifles, Luger pistols, period revolvers and such. Also, Dutch uniforms and personal gear are precisely from the story's 1940 time-frame. The only other minor quibble is one found in quite a few late-50's and 1960's WWII films: a four-seater Messerschmitt Bf.108 touring aeroplane stands in for the later, design-derivative Bf.109 fighter (See 'Von Ryan's Express', and 'The Longest Day' for more examples of this substitution - which was necessary since there were then no restored, flyable Bf.109E aircraft.).'Operation Amsterdam' hasn't dated nearly as badly as have so many other WWII films made in the twenty years following the war because it sticks to its story, because it tells its story without frills, excursions into moralizing, or distracting subplots. Though it didn't benefit from a larger budget, as did 'The Counterfeit Traitor' which was filmed in the same era, 'Operation Amsterdam' delivers the goods.Summed up: Agents voyage to Amsterdam to deprive Nazis of diamonds, return to us with a minor gem of a movie.