Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

John-Kane25 Overall this movie was poorly done. The plot has been used many times before and the low light filming is very grainy. There is a lot of low light filming so it stands out right from the beginning.Then they sort of judge World War II by 70's vietnam views by adding a medic who is a conscientious objector. He refuses to fight when the Brits take over the German convoy. A wwii movie should have the value systems of the 1940's, not the 1970's. The British knew why they were fighting the Germans. They added a lady character for no reason, she has no development and serves no purpose other then to have something to look at I guess.I liked Karl-Otto Alberty in his small role from 'Kelly's heroes so seeing him again in 'Raid on Rommel' was fun. He just fits the German soldier role so well. Wolfgang Preiss was excellent playing as Rommel. So the film does have some good points. At the end the party of what looked to be no more than 2 dozen men loses about 50 men and still has 50 men when they take the shore batteries. This is from using film from a previous movie and just slapping it together haphazardly. The movie should have ended after the tank scene at the fuel dump. If it had ended there I think I could rate it higher.

Theo Robertson This is one of these films that often crops up when someone brings up the topic of worst war films . It probably doesn't deserve this reputation but there's no denying it drowns in a sea of mediocrity . From the outset there's a major spanner in the works with its setting of Libya in 1943 where radio broadcasts talk of the Battle for Tobruk . The film never states when in 1943 it's set but this doesn't matter because the battle for Tobruk took place the previous year and by 1943 Rommel was on the back foot and not as this film suggests on a knife edge between victory and possible defeat . The outcome of the North African campaign was certain in 1943 , especially with the Operation Torch landings in November the previous year . One can understand some artistic license in making the stakes some what higher but not to the point of rewriting history . Wouldn't have just been easier setting the film some time in early 1942 when things were far more uncertain ? Richard Burton even today is a legend of British stage but his career arc in cinema left a lot to be desired and he's obviously slumming it big time here . One wonders if he's trying to emulate the success of WHERE EAGLES DARE where is character is on a top secret mission to defeat the Nazis . The problem is the top secret plan is a bit to similar to a previous and much better film called TOBRUK and if this wasn't bad enough RAID ON ROMMEL makes use of footage from TOBRUK very blatantly which leads to several instances of confused continuity and is a distraction . It also explains why Burton has his hair bleached since the climatic battle scene is culled from TOBRUK where blond haired George Peppard takes on some German tanks . As a footnote the continuity announcer pronounced the title as " Rain on Rimmill " which whilst being some what surreal sums up the carelessness of this movie

zardoz-13 Admittedly, Henry Hathaway's "Raid on Rommel" isn't the masterpiece that Brian Hutton's "Where Eagles Dare" was for Richard Burton, but this low-budget World War II epic about an unlikely British commando unit operating behind Nazi lines in North Africa doesn't qualify as a complete bust. Richard M. Bluel's screenplay is predictable but entertaining for the most part. Sure, better movies about the British North African campaign have been made going back as early as "The Desert Rats of Tobruk" (1944) and then in the 1950s came Hathaway's own "The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel" (1951), followed by Robert Wise's "The Desert Rats" (1953), Nicholas Ray's "Bitter Victory" (1957), Terence Young's "No Time to Die" (1958), Arthur Hiller's "Tobruk" (1967), and one of the very best and most grim: Andre de Toth's "Play Dirty" (1969). "Raid on Rommel" deserves no Oscars or special recognition of any kind, but it is an amenable way to spend 99 minutes.Indeed, "Major Payne" producer Harry M. Tatelman plundered the Universal Studios' stock footage archives for all of the exciting action footage from Hiller's "Tobruk" and seamlessly incorporated it into "Raid on Rommel." I would even argue that the action footage fares better here than in Hiller's "Tobruk." "Tobruk" was a "Guns of Navarone" clone with Rock Hudson as a Canadian and George Peppard as a German Jew who fought against the Nazis. Mind you, recycling footage in Hollywood is an age-old, time-honored practice. For example, every low-budget caveman or lost continent movie that came out of Hollywood in the 1950s exploited footage from "One Million B.C." In "Raid on Rommel," Burton is cast as Captain Alex Foster. British Intelligence riddles a Nazi half-track with machine gun fire and Foster climbs into it and drives off into the desert seemingly oblivious as to his destination. Later, a Nazi convoy ferrying sick P.O.W.s discovers Foster and picks him up. Initially, Major Hugh Tarkington (Clinton Greyn of "Robbery") knows that Foster isn't suffering from heat exhaustion, but he warns him that he wants to know his orders. Foster reveals his mission to Tarkington, only to learn that he has stumbled onto the wrong convoy. Instead of seasoned commandos at his disposal, he has the sick and the injured. Boy, is Foster upset and Tarkington isn't inclined to help him. Eventually, Tarkington changes his mind.Meanwhile, Foster manages to make something of the men at his disposal thanks largely to Sgt. Maj. Allan MacKenzie (John Colios of "Scorpio") and the British overpower their Nazi captors and disguise themselves as the enemy. Talk about improvising! On their way to Tobruk, Foster and MacKenzie give their men a boot camp in firing mortars and rappelling down ropes by slinging them to the sides of the personnel carriers. Along the way, they pick up a civilian and a beautiful woman and use them as a part of their masquerade. Our valiant heroes enter Tobruk, meet Rommel at his headquarters where Foster learns the whereabouts of a fuel depot, and then they blow everything to hell and gone. The scene at Rommel's headquarters is especially neat because Tarkington gets into a polite argument with a cultured Rommel about collecting postage stamps, thereby giving Foster—disguised as a Nazi officer—time to study secret German maps.No, "Raid on Rommel" is not the most historically accurate World War II film by any stretch of the imagination. However, few films produced about historical events are faithful to history. If you see a movie to get the facts straight, you're a misguided soul. Hollywood doesn't specialize in history lessons; movie makers want to entertain us first and then second strive for accuracy. During the last half of the 20th century, all World War II movies contained historically inaccurate equipment. American 'Cold War' army tanks usually masqueraded as Nazi Tiger Tanks and vintage Navy propeller driven fighters doubled for Japanese Zeroes. As far as that goes, most filmmakers ignored the fact that Nazis spoke German and Hitler's madmen uttered their lines with obvious ersatz accents. These problems became conventions largely because American audiences couldn't speak the foreign dialects and subtitles were confined to foreign art films. "Raid on Rommel" contains one of the most obvious conventions of World War II movies that "Catch-22" changed. During one scene, an Allied P-40 Tomahawk fighter attacks the Nazi convoy that Foster has joined. The enemy manages to hit the fighter and it streaks off, pouring smoke, and crashes behind a sand dune with a fireball explosion rolling heavenward to mark its demise. Of course, the producers no more than the owner of that vintage plane were about to destroy it for this inconsequential movie. In "Catch-22," you actually get to see a plane crash nose first into the side of mountain! Meanwhile, the significance of "Raid on Rommel" is undoubtedly lost on today's audience. In 1951, Hathaway helmed an ahead-of-its-time World War II biography "The Desert Fox" and portrayed Rommel (James Mason) in sympathetic terms. In fact, Hathaway's portrait of Rommel proved too sympathetic and most film critics scourged Twentieth Century Fox for this depiction. A couple of years later to set the record straight, Mason reprised his role as Rommel in "The Desert Rats" and he was not accorded the sympathy that outraged critics in the Hathaway gem. Read the major reviews of "The Desert Fox" in Time, Newsweek, and the New York Times and you will see for yourself that Hathaway stirred up controversy.Yes, "Raid on Rommel" is a potboiler of sorts, probably memorable to World War II fans more for Hathaway's brief but sympathetic Rommel scene and for—according to one Burton biographer—Burton's sober performance. He didn't drink a drop while he was acting, but then crusty old Henry Hathaway, who never gave any actor a break, probably kept his eye on the Welshman. The performances are standard and one of the most respected Bavarian actors who specialized in playing German officers—Wolfgang Preiss—plays Field Marshal Rommel.

Jan-146 This afternoon the BBC aired once again this abominable film about a British commando unit set out to destroy a German petrol dump in order to prevent the Germans from using their tanks. As far as I am concerned everything that could be wrong about this movie is wrong: the Germans are portrayed as silly cartoon-like figures who are only interested in war and who believe everything Hitler says. The British protagonists are all civilized people who took on the battle reluctantly and are heroes simply because they're British. This film is also rather comical: at one point one of the British special service man is seen in an encounter with the German general Rommel. Every now and again this British soldier tries to show that he speaks German fluently. Well, he doesn't. You don't have to be German (and I am not) to see that these so called highly trained commandos wouldn't last an hour if they were dropped as secret agents in Nazi-Germany. If this film was shot in the years between 1940-1945, I could have understand. But in 1971?