The Guns of Navarone [VHS]

Gregory Peck plays Mallory, the worlds greatest living mountaineer, linguist and commandoe, picked along with Anthony Quin, to escort a group of sabotuers onto Navarone, where terrifying anti-shipping guns are impeding the rescue of a British garrison. When the vessel sinks in a storm, Mallory is compelled by fate to join and ultimately lead the deadly mission, stirring stuff indeed and highly enjoyable to boot. All of the characters are flawed in that wonderful Great Escape way. Instead of a claustrophobic miner, we get the knief man who's lost his taste for killing. No blind forger hear but a man who's closest comrade will kill him at the end of the war. There's good Germans and bad Germans, a traitor in the camp, Anthony Quayle with gangreen, romance and a surprise ending(well sort of). My personal favourite is where Messrs. Peck and Niven appear to share a cigarette of dubious nature in the closing moments of the film!

This film is a classic, and has always been well regarded, but is it worth buying on DVD? Now to be fair this movie is long in the tooth, and has long been the staple fair of Sunday matinees and video-store bargain bins. So is it worth forking out for? Simple answer:yes!

Long answer: Aside from a great tranfer, where the day-for-night shots are printed as night,its in widescreen, with Dolby digital sound! To boot, there is a plethora of extras. Not many forty year old movies come with a directors' commentary, but this does. As J. Lee Thompson was a studio gun-for-hire, this was just another job rather than a personal obsession, so dont expect great personal insights. For me the real goodies are the bizarre promo films thrown in for good measure. Publicity films date faster than calenders and theses are excellently silly, fun, pathe style newsreels. Worth a look if only to see Peck playing football with war-orphans in Nazi regalia, and check out the gals shopping. This is capped with an indepth making of, based around lenghty interviews with Peck, Quin and Thompson. Some great personal reflections.

Fans of this movie will need not my recommendation, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and all the bonus material. Two thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I won't say too much about the film itself, which is approaching 50 years old, except to say that the performances of all the cast appearing in this well executed WWII thriller are extremely high quality. Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck and David Niven in particular really do act their socks off (Stanley Baker also stands out, despite having less to work with). The actors are helped greatly by a fine script, which only lets itself down during the first 15 minutes with some rather naive moralising from James Robertson Justice, and a shocking "cameo" from Richard Harris, complete with badly judged Australian accent (and some pretty flowery language for the period). However, when the plot starts rolling the combination of excellent dialogue and scorching acting make it very difficult to take your eyes of the screen. In fact, the action scenes struggle to compete with all this finely crafted drama.

It's always good when a classic like this receives a 2 disc special edition, and there's a wonderfully exhaustive library of Documentaries and period Featurettes on the second disc. It was very enjoyable to hear Peck and Quinn reminisce of their time on what appears to have been a happy set, what a shame many of the rest of the cast are no longer with us to share their thoughts.

Interestingly, one of the docs concerns the restoration of the film. I was actually very disappointed with this transfer of The Guns of Navarone, which I thought was grubby, much too grainy, rather gloomy, and also suffered from poor colour and contrast. I've recently seen Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare on DVD (two other MacLean thrillers from the sixties), and although they've not received a restoration to my knowledge, image quality is strong. The Bond films of the era have of course received stunning restorations using the Lowry digital process, and look wonderful. It is certainly obvious from the doc that a lot of work was done; an improvement is noticeable when comparisons are shown, and they have also corrected a long standing error at the beginning of the film regarding night-time shooting. The doc also makes it clear that the original print was in a very sorry condition. However, I'm not convinced that the restoration has gone far enough.

The new Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is a great success though, with clear, weighty speech, room shaking bass in the action scenes, and also plenty of subtle detail. Dimitri Tiomkin's score sounds wonderful in this re-mastered form, but why remove the Intermission music? It is available as an isolated chapter on the bonus disc, and the restoration doc points out that the film was rarely shown with it included, but I'd prefer to have the choice. After all, if I don't want to hear it I can just skip it.

A flawed release then in my opinion, let down by a restoration that I think is only half successful. Hopefully, with new techniques applied such as Lowry's, a more thorough job can be done in time for its release on Blu-Ray.

The Guns of Navarone is one of the best of the 'Boys own' style war movies I've ever seen. The plot is simple. Two giant cannon on the isle of Navarone are sinking all the allied shipping passing through an important bit of the Aegean. Six ships on the way to evacuate another island before the 2000 troops on that island are wiped out in a devastating German attack will pass through soon, before they arrive a team of commandos have to penetrate the German fortress on Navarone and spike the guns. A nice simple premise, around which is hung a magnificent tale.

THe script is quite intelligent for this type of war movie. I've always liked it as it seemed a bit more 'grown up' than most. The heroes are presented as real people, with their own fears and moral doubts about what they are doing. They even have qualms about killing enemy soldiers at times. Though one of the German officers is presented as the typical comic book villainous Gestapo officer, most of the other enemy characters are shown in an almost sympathetic light, especially Oberst Meusel, played by Walter Gotell.

This is an all star production, with 6 or 7 really big names on screen. The director manages to give them all plenty of screen time, and there is a very balanced feel between the performances. Outstanding is David Niven as Miller, in what I consider to be one of the best performances of his career (right up there with 'A Matter Of Life And Death'). For once he doesn't play his standard character, the laid back urbane English socialite, but presents us with a very real character, with a fear of 'being responsible', a dry wit and shrewd intelligence. The scenes where he clashes with Gregory Peck's implacable team leader, Mallory, over his treatment of Miller's close friend, are the best in the film.

Peck is superb in the lead role. A man who will do whatever is necessary to 'get the job done', whether he likes it or not. Not just the stern unbending hero though, this is obviously a compassionate man, and the things he has to do, to both friend and foe, obviously take a toll as the film progresses.

The film is quite long at 2.5 hours, but there is plenty of action, plot and character development to keep the interest. It never drags. And the build up to the climactic last few scenes are nail biting.

The special effects won an academy award in the early 60's, and still stand up reasonably well today. they are certainly head and shoulders above any other film I can think of from the time.

This DVD contains a nice print in 2.35:1 widescreen. Some restoration work ahs been done and the picture is of a good quality for its age. The 5.1 surround sound is excellent. There are a range of extras on this disc, the best of which has to be short documentary shot (I think) in the mid 90's with interviews with Peck, Quinn, and Lee Thompson, the director.

For the price being asked this is an excellent package.