1967
Nunnally Johnson, Lukas Heller
Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Trini López, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, Robert Webber, Tom Busby
A Major with an attitude problem and a history of getting things done is told to interview military prisoners with death sentences or long terms for a dangerous mission; To parachute behind enemy lines and cause havoc for the German Generals at a rest house on the eve of D-Day. ------- US army Major John Reisman, based in London, is an inventive man who often thinks outside the box which causes many problems in the structured military. But it is because of this mentality that in March 1944, he is assigned, or as his superiors put it volunteers for a near suicide mission. Prior to the Allied forces invading continental Europe, he and his team, who he will train personally with Sergeant Bowren as his second in command, will infiltrate a highly fortified and guarded French château being used by the Nazis as respite house and meeting place primarily for high ranking German officers, kill as many of the officers as possible and take out the communications tower. His squad will consist of twelve of the most heavily sentenced GI convicts, many whose sentence is death. Reisman, who doesn't like the assignment because of the involvement of the convicts, adds one caveat to doing this job: that the convicts have their sentences commuted if they survive. Reisman quickly learns that besides a resentment to authority, the twelve convicts are a disparate group, each with their own button issues and motivations. Reisman not only has to get them to cooperate, but work as a team, which includes having a zero tolerance policy for the group as a whole on issues such as escape attempts while under his command. Even if he can achieve these goals, Reisman also faces the obstacle of Colonel Everett Breed, who is the antithesis of Reisman and who will be at the parachute training base at the same time as Reisman's squad, for which Breed has disdain. ------- It is 1944 and the Allied Armies stand ready for a major invasion of Germany from bases in England. As a prelude to D-Day, US Army Intelligence orders a top secret mission where convicted criminals will be offered a pardon in return for parachuting into the Reich on a suicide mission. ------- An Army Major who likes to butt heads with his superiors, is being "given" a new assignment, to train 12 men who are either sentenced to death or life imprisonment, to go behind enemy lines raid a chateau that the Germans are using as an R&R center and kill as enemy officers as they can and disrupt the German chain of command. Now he not only has to train them; he has to get them to start acting like a unit. And when a Colonel whom the Major has been having the most trouble with reports to the Generals that his unit is not working out, the Major asks the General to try them out by having them participate in a war game. If they don't succeed they will be sent back to prison to face their sentences. ------- In late March 1944 a rebellious US Army Major is "volunteered" to train twelve convicted military criminals for a suicide mission - to parachute to a heavily-guarded Nazi general staff officers' retreat to try and assassinate German officers on leave. To get his unorthodox assignment done the Major must convince Army brass to grant pardons to the men, then try to mold the twelve recidivists into a functioning unit, a task made more daunting by the doubts of a by-the-book General and by the suicidal nature of the mission.
144 minutes (at 25 frames per second)
858 MB
DivX 5 - resolution: 544x240