Anzio (1968)

Starts off on the wrong tone for a war movie. Cheesy acting. Boring movie. 2 hours of my life I'll never get back.

I was a VA-176 attack pilot in 1967 flying form the USS Saratoga in the Mediterranean. They used footage of my squadron flying on a weapons impact range off of Italy for one scene in this movie. We were flying Navy A1H Skyraiders, not around in WWII. They have a couple of clips of us doing run-ins on a target that they used at the end of the movie when Mitchum was in a shoot out with a German sniper. They were great airplanes used in Korea and Viet Nam for close air support. Also call Sandys or Spads by those who flew them, loved them and those troops on the ground who were protected by them. That;s my 5 second claim to fame in a Robert Mitchum movie. Not a bad move, a little heavy handed on the anti-war message. Not one of Mitchum's better movies but worth a look..

Based on the true World War II incident of Allied forces landing on the beaches of Anzio without opposition, when the commanding officer makes the incredibly unfortunate and wrong-headed decision of digging his forces in, rather than making a forward march into Rome, since there were no German troops around yet. Robert Mitchum plays a war correspondent who travels back through the lines unopposed to prove the decision wrong, but tragically German forces do arrive eventually, causing an unnecessary conflict and loss of lives that could have been avoided.Despite a good cast(including Peter Falk) this war film is dull and lifeless, which is strange considering the tragic and explosive nature of the incident, but film remains an unmemorable misfire.

a very accurate film . Rome was an open city . if it were not for the stupidity of the American high command , a lot of lives would have been saved .don't pay attention to the previous idiots' comments about this movie . it is very good .robert Mitchum and peter Falk are above average as is the script . by the way...Americans committed plenty of atrocities in world war two ;i have three words for that -- Dresden ; Hiroshima ; and Nagasaki.one of the points this movie makes is that there are no real winners in a war . as Plato said , " only the dead have seen the end of war . give this movie a shot ;it is better than the mindless jingo-ism of a john Wayne or [ god , help us ! ] a Ronald Regan film . ciao !