The Guns of Navarone an entertaining war classic.
It was 1961, and Hollywood was still making big productions that used to have casts with renowned performers, betting on mass spectacle, with large sets, the sets, the stories were increasingly larger in scope, and the protagonists face kingdoms and empires.
The Guns of Navarone is an agile film, one of the best war and action films of the 60's, having as context the Second World War.
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Navarone, (a fictitious island), has been taken by the Nazi army, and on it they position two cannons capable of destroying any battleship sailing in the Aegean Sea. In 1943 around 2,000 British soldiers remain trapped on the island of Keros, and the British Empire's objective is to rescue them, but these cannons, which can accurately destroy any ship at a great distance, get in the way.
Its protagonists are made up of a commando of allies and rebels who must confront the German forces and destroy an impregnable fortress.
This small commando is made up of 6 men: Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck), a mountaineer enlisted in the U.S. Army , Andrea Stauros (Anthony Quinn), a colonel of a Greek regiment that no longer exists, now a brave guerrilla of the Greek resistance, the British commander Franklin (Anthony Quayle), Corporal Miller (David Niven), an explosives expert who has repeatedly refused to become an officer, Private Brown (Stanley Baker), a skilled mechanic who is unrivaled with a dagger in his hand, and Private Pappadimos (James Darren), a New York-educated Greek who turns out to be a bona fide natural-born killer.
In command of the mission is Major Franklin, but Keith Mallory is the one who leads the group as he speaks perfect German and Greek, knows the waters of the Aegean like the back of his hand and, before the war, was the most famous climber in the world. All this makes him indispensable since the only point of Navarone that the Germans do not guard is the southern cliff, a vertical wall over the sea insurmountable for any human being.
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It is a war film that does not show big battles, and it is narrated as a kind of diary in which we are presented with the conflict, the team, the mission, the plan, the execution and the resolution. All this with impressive natural scenery, and a lot of action.
The protagonists manage to climb the cliff and meet two women members of the Greek resistance, Maria de Spyros (Irene Papas) and her friend Anna (Gia Scala), while they are constantly pursued by German soldiers.
The film is a great story with well-defined and structured characters, heroes with feelings that are not always good, who must face tough decisions despite their grudges and desires for revenge, and they will have to do it with courage, honor and overcoming the difficult moral debates that come their way.
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The Guns of Navarone features an impressive soundtrack with an unforgettable, powerful and catchy central theme This Soundtrack was provided by Dimitri Tiomkin.
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This film is the best work of filmmaker J. Lee Thompson, who also excelled with the first version of Cape Fear. Screenwriter Carl Foreman adapted the novel of the same name by Alistair MacLean and served as the film's producer.
The influence of this work on other films such as The Dirty Dozen, Tobruk or The Wild Geese is unquestionable.
The Guns of Navarone is outstanding in special effects, in fact it won the 1961 Oscar for this section.
The two and a half hours that the film lasts go by without you realizing it, which is due to how entertaining it is to watch. With some actors who, without actually offering us the best performances of their respective careers, endow their characters with great charisma and personality.
A great war movie that no lover of the genre should miss, a benchmark when it comes to war movies.