TOBRUK—the final half-hour is worth sitting through the rest of this 1967 WW2 sabotage tale for,as the Allied commando team led by Rock Hudson, George Peppard and Nigel Green engage in a spectacular, hell-roaring battle around some fuel bunkers and coastal guns belonging to the troops of Field Marshal Rommel.
The trip across the desert to the objective, the reasons they’re all in on it, and the friction between leaders are all the kind of problems you’ve seen in many another war movie, slackly written up here by Leo Gordon, who also acts in small role. Green is properly rigid, as we’ve come to expect of British movie Majors, while Percy Herbert and Norman Rossington adeptly essay the rank & file types they did so often. Hudson and Peppard are acceptable (neither probably excited by the project).
Directed by Arthur Hiller, unveiled over 107 minutes, it garnered $5,000,000, small dent in a $6,000,000 cost, though it snagged a deserved Oscar nomination for Visual Effects. Mainly though, it’s that ker-boom finale, packed with enough explosive, flame-throwing, machine-gunning mayhem to draw forth a “wow!”exclamation, while your wife or girlfriend wonders what the hell is wrong with you that you vicariously enjoy so much violence. Explain by saying something definitive like “Hey,well, this is like…history”. Good luck.
With Guy Stockwell, Jack Watson, Liam Redmond, Robert Wolders.
