They Who Dare (1954)

Dirk Bogarde plays the leader of this group of commandos. Their mission is to split into two groups and simultaneously destroy two airbases in Axis controlled Greece. The immediacy and importance of the mission isn't so obvious in this one and most of the commandos are rather faceless characters.Sometimes movies don't age well for a variety of reasons. In the case of "They Who Dare", the problem is that less than a decade after this film debuted, a very similar yet much, much better movie came out and far surpassed it. So, if today you watch the film, you're very likely to think "Wow....THE GUNS OF NAVARONE sure did this sort of thing better!"...and you'd be correct. Both films are about an international group of commandos who are secreted onto a Greek island to disrupt the Axis. With Navarone, the objective were those freakin' big guns. Here with "They Who Dare" it's an attack on two airbases. The latter film is better mostly because it has a better cast, more interesting script and a nice Hollywood polish this one lacks. Now it's not a bad film...but it certainly isn't close to the quality of the latter film.By the way, one way this film differed greatly was that once the guns were blown up, the British Navy arrived and rescued the heroes. However, in this Bogarde film, the mission is completed and then they have to work their way OUT of Greece...kind of on their own! And, this makes up a substantial portion of the film...which also makes the film run on way too long.

Please note that my vote of 9/10 applies only to the 92-minutes version. The 107 minutes version I would rate as 5/10, or maybe 6/10 at the most.The problem with the long version -- and the reason "They Who Dare" earned so many scathing and unenthusiastic reviews on its first release back in 1953 -- centers on inconsistencies and other defects in scriptwriter Robert Westerby's characterizations. Recognizing that these complaints were legitimate and that Dirk Bogarde's box office popularity was being undermined, the movie was withdrawn and expertly cut down to 92 minutes.As far as I'm concerned, the cutdown concentrates on action, and as these sequences are directed with Lewis Milestone's usual bravura, I'm not going to quibble about a few little, trifling elements of confusion that I may have in following the plotting and the storyline.

This film will be of great interest to WW2 Aviation enthusiasts as it features several authentic Italian Savoia - Marchetti S.M. 79 three - motor bombers. These aircraft were provided by the Lebanese Air Force which was the last operator of the type.I would make an educated guess that this film was shot on Cyprus as there is an abundance of British Army trucks and armoured cars modified and painted to resemble German vehicles. A Bristol Beaufighter aircraft can also be briefly glimpsed during the airfield attack sequence.The special effects ,such as model aircraft being blown up, are not up to modern standards but they are no worse than other 1950s war movies such as "The Dambusters".

World War II movie, of British production, which does not have anything that justifies the time one could possibly spare to see it, other than the great Dirk Bogarde starring, with the good British actor Denholm Elliott in a second role. The scenario is rather conventional (we have seen this stuff many times) and does not develop the characters and their relations as it could. It has also attempted to give a Greek aroma, in a very clumsy way: as there is not even one Greek actor among the cast the spoken Greek sound very strange (at least to someone who knows the language like me). Additionally, the portrait of the Greeks falls into a lot of stereotypes, which sometimes are offensive to these people, revealing more things about the script writer himself than the actual Greeks. I have given to this movie 4 out of 10.