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

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

bladermail This film takes re-writing history to new levels.This film is set after the Fall of Tobruk, June 1942. However, there were no American forces in Africa AT ALL until the Operation Torch landings in Morocco / Algeria in November 1942.I can only imagine it was designed as a feel-good film for American home consumption, since I can't believe British or Commonwealth audiences at the time (i.e. around about the time the confident yet green American forces were routed by the Germans at Sidi Bou Zid and Kasserine Pass) would have been pleased to hear about how an American sergeant usurped the authority of a British captain & led his tiny band to a glorious victory against superior German forces.But then, when did Hollywood ever let the truth get in the way of a 'good' story?

Scarecrow-88 One of Bogie's films for Columbia Pictures is a real winner: a WWII film about a trio of Americans, a gaggle of British, a British Sudanese, a "Frenchie", and an Italian and German prisoners of war all riding on top of and inside a lone US tank Bogie's Sgt Gunn across North Africa as the Nazis take Tobruk. Needing to find water, the Sudanese (a wonderful Rex Ingram) knows of wells to the South (which is the only direction not taken by or surrounded by German forces), and Gunn follows his directions, eventually finding Bir Acroma, a temple with a man-made well with just enough water to keep them all from starving. As a regimen of Nazis (and a guide) are on their way, desperate for water, Gunn learns from a couple of soldiers real thirsty that about 500 men are in a mechanized battalion heading their way. Sending the Germans on their way with a fake proposition over trading food for water, Gunn and company (except for the Nazi captive who actually knows English) plan to fight the battalion, using the Bir Acroma as their outpost. Can they keep them at bay, while Gunn's fellow soldier, Waco (Bruce Bennett) drives off for potential ally reinforcements?An exotic setting (director Korda knows how to direct adventure films as evident by the excellent Four Feathers and popular Jungle Book) with the desert looking mighty treacherous and the windy sand storms quite overbearing. Add the tension of encroaching Germans with more men, limited water, and tiring wait for the hopes of help on the horizon, "Sahara" is the perfect kind of war film to keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. The weaponry is as limited as the water, and the film shows Gunn and his small squadron doing all they can to battle the enemy with everything they have.Memorable scenes include a marvelous J Carrol Naish standing up to Kurt Kreuger's nasty Nazi about his people's misfortune and his stand against what Hitler is all about and the soldiers who fall for his madness & Rex's Tambul smothering Kurt's face in the sand. The lengthy standoff at the end at Bir Acroma, with forces from both sides dwindling, has a lot of likable characters (including terrific character actor Dan Duryea as Gunn's other American soldier, Richard Nugent as the British captain, and Louis T Mercier as the lone French soldier who had worked for the French Resistance, having seen those he knew in Occupied France perish at the hands of the Nazis, with Patrick O'Moore as a British soldier and Lloyd Bridges in a bit part as the first casualty on the desert trip) involved in the gunfire and shootout. Rex's scene with Bennett as they talk wives while inside the well is a nicely warm moment where two men from different worlds find common ground...their comraderie is nifty. Duryea and Bennett's betting is a source of amusement as well...particularly when they bet on the decisions Gunn will make. Naish's begging to come with the tank crew and Bogie's deciding to allow him to join them is a real dramatic highpoint. Here is where Naish proves that he's more than some B-movie minor talent. Naish deserves to be re-evaluated by buffs, in my opinion.The sacrifices of war is nothing new in films like Sahara, as men risk it all to represent what they believe in: freedom. Kreuger's Nazi is an appropriate villain and despicable symbol of Hitler, in a plane shooting at Gunn's Loulabelle (name of his tank after his beloved horse!) before they shoot him down. Tambul's Sudan soldier is a key figure in the film, his black skin repulsive to the Nazi, with it only fitting that he kills Kreuger, dying a hero in the process as the Germans fire at him with heavy artillery. Bogart's stalwart, courageous hero, speechifying the danger of their stand against the Germans but why it is important to do so, is a joy to watch for me personally. But the whole cast behind him is first rate.

sddavis63 This is another of Humphrey Bogart's war movies, this one made for Columbia Pictures instead of his usual work for Warner Brothers. In some respects, it's a war movie with a difference, in that it focuses much more on the men than the fighting. Bogie's character is Sgt. Gunn, an American tank commander separated from his unit in North Africa, trying to get his tank and his men back to Allied lines. Along the way they pick up a few stranded British soldiers, and also take a few prisoners, most notably Italian Giuseppe (a role for which J. Carroll Naish was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar.)The primary issue involved is not so much the battle against the Germans (although that comes in the last half hour or so) but is rather the battle with the desert. The men are running out of water, and are desperately searching for a well. There's a brief hint of some competition, as at first the British soldiers aren't clear that they want to be given orders by an American sergeant, but that gets resolved quickly. Naish did, in fact, do a great job as Giuseppe, portraying very believably the general contempt that many Italian soldiers had for the war. He was contrasted with a stereotypically gung-ho German soldier.The climax comes with a battle against a German battalion that's also desperately searching for water. Hopelessly outnumbered, Gunn decides they should take a stand and delay the Germans as much as possible. The scenes of desert warfare were believably portrayed (and the desert landscape was totally believable.) The result of the "battle" was perhaps not believable enough, unfortunately. It's an interesting movie, less action-packed than many war movies and as a result a bit slow perhaps at the start as it builds toward that last battle.

ferbs54 During the years 1941-'44, Warner Bros. star Humphrey Bogart made no less than six films that dealt with the ongoing Second World War for the studio. First there was "All Through the Night," a tremendously entertaining action/comedy that had Bogie and pals going up against Nazi saboteurs in NYC. Then came "Across the Pacific," with Bogie foiling a Japanese plot to blow up the Panama Canal; the justly beloved "Casablanca," with Bogie aiding a resistance fighter at the cost of his lady love; "Action in the North Atlantic," a cat-and-mouse actioner involving German subs; "Passage to Marseilles," a tale of the Free French on the high seas; and "To Have and Have Not," in which Bogie met Lauren Bacall's "Slim" and helped a French underground leader in Martinique. And then there is the film "Sahara," which Bogie did not make for Warners, but rather when on loan to Columbia. Released in November '43, it was Columbia's highest grosser of that year, pulling in $2.3 million in its first three weeks (big money back then!). As it turns out, the film is one of the best of Bogie's war-years bunch; certainly the toughest, most violent and grittiest. Featuring an all-male cast and some tremendous battle sequences, the film sports a very high body count, and to its credit, there is no way for any viewer to foretell who will survive in the cast and who will not; most, sadly, do not.In the film, Bogart plays an American sergeant named Joe Gunn (you've gotta love that name!), a tank commander attached to the British 8th Army in North Africa, right around the time that Gen. Rommel's Africa Korps captured Tobruk (that would make it June '42). Cut off from his unit, Gunn retreats in his "M3 air-cooled" tank (which he's named Lulubelle) along with fellow Americans Doyle (the great Dan Duryea) and Waco (Bruce Bennett, who would go on to costar with Bogart in two of my personal favorite films, "Dark Passage" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"). Before long, they encounter a group comprised of British, French, Irish and South African soldiers (one of whom is played by Lloyd Bridges), and then a British Sudanese soldier (Rex Ingram, who many will remember as the genie from the classic British fantasy "The Thief of Bagdad") with an Italian captive (the great character actor J. Carrol Naish). After shooting down and capturing a German flier, the motley band manages to find a bare minimum of water at the well at Bir Acroma, and runs into big trouble when a German motorized unit of 500 men gathers at that same well. And this leads to a remarkably intense sequence in which Bogart and his eight fellows must defend themselves against some pretty formidable odds, to say the least, in a microcosm of the larger war...."Sahara" was directed by Zoltan Korda, the Hungarian director who had turned the 1939 African-desert war film "The Four Feathers" into such a shining success. His direction of the battle sequences here is simply aces, abetted by some beautiful B&W lensing from renowned cinematographer Rudolph Mate and an exciting score by fellow Hungarian Miklos Rozsa (who had also provided the scores for "The Four Feathers" and "The Thief of Bagdad"). The film's screenplay, by Korda and John Howard Lawson, gives us ample opportunity to get to know each of the men in Bogart's group, and they are an extremely likable bunch of guys. Thus, when they are offed one by one, the viewer feels as if he is losing someone he knows and cares about, and, as mentioned, most of these guys, sadly, do not make it to the end. All the characters in the film get their moment to shine or behave heroically, especially Ingram, and the speech that Naish delivers on the differences between the Italian and the German is a memorable one (he was Oscar nominated for his work here). And as for Bogie, he gets to give a very moving speech himself, regarding why men must fight against insuperable odds; a speech that invokes Dunkirk, Bataan and Corregidor, and one that Victor Laszlo might well have smiled on in approbation. His Sgt. Gunn is a wonderful character, a tough and seasoned soldier with a decent heart, and his ministrations to Lulubelle--which he calls "old girl"--may bring to mind his Charlie Allnut's similar handling of The African Queen. As revealed in Sperber and Lax' Bogart biography, as well as the online journal of (then Second Lt.) Kenneth Koyen, "Sahara" was filmed in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (the largest state park in California), 235 feet below sea level on the western shore of the Salton Sea. Despite the midwinter shoot, temps were still in the 90s, and the desert setting proved to be a very convincing substitute for the Libyan Sahara. Bogart managed to keep his cool physically with a steady supply of Thermos-encased martinis, only losing his cool when clashing with director Korda by day and brawling with wife Mayo Methot at night (appropriately enough, the cast and crew were ensconced at the nearby town of, uh, Brawley, where Kurt Kreuger, who played the sneaky German flier, bonded with Bogart over drinks). Despite the heat, the less than desirable accommodations, the fights and Bogart's heavy drinking, the picture turned out to be a formidable accomplishment; not only a hard-hitting, rousing and inspirational war film, but also another great victory for Bogart, riding extremely high post-"Casablanca" and on his way to becoming the highest-paid actor in the world ($460K a year by 1946; again, big money back then!). I hadn't seen "Sahara" in over 35 years until the other night, and was amazed at how many images from the film had stayed with me. Dedicated to the American IV Armored Corps of the Army Ground Forces (many of whom appeared as German soldiers in the film!), it is an experience not easily forgotten.