World War Two seems to be the only major world conflict resembling an average Hollywood movie—the dividing line between Good Guys and Bad Guys is more or less clearly defined, and the final victory of the Good Guys provides a happy ending, at least for the majority of the audience. So, it isn’t surprising that in the following decades WW2 became the inspiration for many action‑oriented pieces of popular culture—novels, comic books and movies. In the literary domain, Alistair MacLean contributed to the trend with a series of novels about small bands of Allied agents or commandos wreaking havoc behind enemy lines. The combination of complicated plots and constant breathtaking action proved to be quite attractive for movie producers, so in the 1960s some of those novels were adapted into spectacular and very popular action films. The most popular and influential of them all was The Guns of Navarone, directed in 1961 by J. Lee Thompson.

The plot of the film begins in autumn 1943. Following the capitulation of Italy and the mass surrender of Italian garrisons scattered all over the occupied Balkans, British forces seized the opportunity and rushed to seize many Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. This attempt to regain a foothold in the Balkans was short‑lived, because the Germans reacted more rapidly by sending even more forces into the area and putting the small British garrisons into a strategically untenable situation. The situation is especially grim for the 2,000 men on the island of Kheros, who can’t be evacuated by sea because the only escape route is controlled by two huge German naval guns stationed on the nearby island of Navarone. Attempts to silence the guns from the air failed, and less than a week before the final German assault British command is left with only one desperate alternative. A small group of British and Greek commandos, led by Major Franklin (played by Anthony Quayle), is sent to land on the island, contact the local partisans and, with their help, sabotage the guns before the evacuation convoy gets near Kheros. When their mission gets underway, the commandos are faced with many unexpected difficulties and Captain Mallory (played by Gregory Peck), who has replaced the injured Franklin, begins to suspect there may be a traitor among his comrades.

The script for The Guns of Navarone was written by Carl Foreman, one of the most talented Hollywood screenwriters of the 1950s, whose previous credits included High Noon. He remained uncredited for his last major film, the WW2 drama The Bridge on the River Kwai, due to studio blacklisting and alleged Communist beliefs. The Guns of Navarone was Foreman’s first major project with his real name back on the credits (and the way he saw his alleged fling with Communism could be seen in the character of C.P.O. Brown, a disillusioned veteran of the Spanish Civil War, played by Stanley Baker). Foreman adapted MacLean’s novel, probably intrigued by the opportunity to explore the humanity in war—a theme he had used with so much success in Kwai.

Unfortunately, this time the direction wasn’t in the hands of a first‑class filmmaker like David Lean, but J. Lee Thompson, a director whose overall career was hardly stellar. Thompson was less interested in serious subjects and character exploration and instead paid attention only to the numerous action scenes. Those scenes are truly spectacular, using both the Shepperton studios and exotic island locations of Rhodes, as well as the manpower and equipment of the Greek and British military. In some cases, the special effects are top‑notch and can impress even after almost four decades (like in the scene depicting the commando team landing on the island). But, generally speaking, the attraction of these scenes lies in quantity, not quality—The Guns of Navarone simply features more explosions, more shootouts and a bigger body‑count than any contemporary action movie. The characters somehow got lost in all that mayhem and, despite being played by excellent actors, they hardly stay in the viewer’s memory, since their motivations and subplots are mostly only hinted at and never properly explored, despite the film having a length of more than two and a half hours. Anthony Quayle, whose real‑life WW2 adventures actually resembled those of his character, is the only exception as the physically and psychologically injured leader of the team.

The Guns of Navarone, although inferior as a serious WW2 drama, could still be enjoyed as an entertaining, exciting action film with an appeal that hasn’t faded through time. Its reputation, on the other hand, owes much more to the more talented film‑makers who later used The Guns of Navarone as an inspiration for much better examples of the genre.

(Historical note: The islands of Kheros and Navarone are fictitious, as are the events described in the film. The real events that inspired them, however, turned out quite differently for the British. In November 1943 British island garrisons in the Aegean Sea were overrun in a combined operation by the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. The British attempt to evacuate their stranded forces turned into a disaster—the Royal Navy suffered huge losses and most of the men in the garrisons surrendered to the Germans.)

RATING: 6/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on January 18th 2000)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/10911-the-guns-of-navarone
Critic: AAA