Director: John Sturges
Cast: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Donald
Have I Seen It Before: This is one of those times that I kind of hate that I added this field into these reviews all those years ago. It shifts the entire affair from a meditation on a film’s nature or a celebration of its virtues, into something like a confession.
I’m stalling. I’ve never seen it. I accept your judgments now.
But! But. I did manage to wait to see it for the first time until I could see it on the big screen. So maybe I just have a terrific sense of timing.
Sure.
Did I Like It: I mean, I get it now. I know why you’re all judging me. The movie is fantastic. Stacked to the brim with enough stars being precisely the stars that they’re supposed to be. You can practically feel the urge of a the next generation of filmmakers to pluck these gentlemen for their own future projects*.
It’s so likable, so vibrant, so fast-paced that I could hardly look away from it in its nearly three hour—definitely 2 VHS tape style—runtime. It is so winning, so laced with suspense at every turn that it took me an entire day to dwell on the fact that it was a little strange that Wellinski, the Tunnel King (Charles Bronson) being claustrophobic was especially convenient from a dramatic tension standpoint, seeing as he’s already spent most of the war digging tunnels.
I love a movie that’s so good that its one glaring flaw is rendered invisible.
*Skimming around the internet, I even learn that Spielberg’s first choice for the Richard Dreyfuss role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was McQueen. Would have been a different movie, to be sure. All that being said, one would think that Garner would have had more of a film career as opposed to the TV career he did have.