John Sturges’ entertaining adaptation of the Jack Higgins novel starts from a similar premise to that of Alberto Cavalcanti‘s Went the Day Well?
Michael Caine is Colonel Kurt Steiner, a rebellious German paratrooper imprisoned and awaiting sentence for striking a fellow Officer (while defending a Polish woman prisoner against brutal treatment from an SS guard), when Nazi colonel Max Radl (Robert Duvall) of the Abwehr (Military Intelligence) offers him the chance to save both his own life and that of his men.
Steiner is offered the opportunity to lead his men on what appears to be a daring, yet suicidal mission to go to England and kidnap Winston Churchill from a prime ministerial visit to East Anglia in 1943.
If it becomes impossible to abduct the British leader, their orders are equally explicit – they must kill him.
They are parachuted into the small (fictitious) Norfolk village of Studley Constable dressed as Free Polish paratroopers, misleading the locals into believing they are Allies on military exercises.
While the commandos await the arrival of the Prime Minister at a nearby country house, one of Steiner’s men rescues a young boy who has fallen in the river and is headed for the wheel of a water mill.
The young boy is rescued, but the soldier is killed on the water wheel, and his German uniform (concealed under his Polish uniform) is revealed to the watching villagers.
Steiner and his men decide to retreat to the safety of the village church and await the arrival of both Churchill and the now-informed local allied forces.
The first to arrive on the scene is the amateurish Colonel Pitts (Larry Hagman drawling out his one-liners, sounding as if he has just wandered off the set of Dallas), but it isn’t long before a more experienced officer appears to contest Steiner’s men’s resistance.
Shot entirely on location, this is a boys-own adventure story, full of war-movie clichés, but there are plenty of colourful character turns.
Donald Pleasence is a gimlet-eyed, psychotic Heinrich Himmler, and Donald Sutherland is the shifty Brit-hating IRA man, Liam Devlin, who causes some disquiet in the village by seducing local girl Molly Prior (Jenny Agutter).
NB: Studley Constable was a fictitious village added to a standard Ordnance Survey map of the north Norfolk coast in the triangular space between the three villages of Warham, Wighton, and Westgate/Binham, just a few miles southeast of Wells-next-the-sea.
Colonel Kurt Steiner
Michael Caine
Liam Devlin
Donald Sutherland
Colonel Max Radl
Robert Duval
Molly Prior
Jenny Agutter
Heinrich Himmler
Donald Pleasence
Admiral Canaris
Anthony Quayle
Joanna Grey
Jean Marsh
Pamela
Judy Geeson
Father Verecker
John Standing
Colonel Pitts
Larry Hagman
Captain Clark
Treat Williams
Director
John Sturges
Video
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Steiner is offered the opportunity to lead his men on what appears to be a daring, yet suicidal mission to go to England and kidnap Winston Churchill from a prime ministerial visit to East Anglia in 1943.
Steiner and his men decide to retreat to the safety of the village church and await the arrival of both Churchill and the now-informed local allied forces.
