Von Ryan's Express

This one is no exception, Why anyone thinks that this guy can act is beyond me. The movie was silly and Frank being the leader is even sillier. This movie would have been done better even if Bing Crosby was the lead. I've seen him in many different movies, From Here to Eternity, Out on the Town, Robin and the Seven Hoods, and no matter what I see him in, it's the same untalented Frank. His voice may have been a hit for some but his acting is non plus at the best.

Awesome warlike movie with memorable images and outstanding acting by well-known faces . This is a splendid film about a daring breakout from an Italian concentration camp with all star cast and magnificently realized by Mark Robson . The opening prologue states: "Italy , August 1943. With the Allies poised to strike, the Germans seized control of Italy. So the war-weary Italian nation fought on, a prisoner of the German armies¨ . There appears Ryan, an American POW Colonel (Frank Sinatra , his leather jacket was later worn by Bob Crane in Hogan's Heroes and was later worn by Greg Kinnear in Auto Focus) and a British military (Trevor Howard who was second choice for Major Fincham after Peter Finch turned it down and Jack Hawkins was possible for this part) is the officer in charge until Ryan takes over the escape plan . Ryan leads his fellow prisoners as foreign soldiers (James Brolin , John Leyton , Edward Mulhare) as Italian local military (Sergio Fantoni , Adolfo Celi and Vito Scotti as Train Engineer) on a perilous getaway from the Germans (led by Wolfgang Preiss as Major Von Klemment) in Italy . Having seemingly made errors of judgement, Ryan has to get the support of the mainly British soldiers he is commanding . As they aboard a German train to neutral Switzerland . This great action tale contains thrills, intrigue, tension, excitement galore, entertainment and lots of fun . Suspenseful WWII epic packs exceptional plethora of prestigious actors incarnating the motley group of POWs , giving good acting and support , as a sensational Frank Sinatra whose character , Colonel Ryan, remains today as attractive iconography ; Edward Mulhare as an army priest posing as a Nazi officer , Brad Dexter as roguish Sgt. Bostick ,Sergio Fantoni as Capt. Oriani , a very young Raffaela Carra and Michael Goodliffe, who was an actual Prisoner of War during WWII , being captured at Dunkirk and spent the next five years in a German POW camp . Excellent production design and art direction with evocative scenarios by Walter Scott . Rousing and lively soundtrack , nowadays a classic score, by Jerry Goldsmith . Colorful cinematography by William H Daniels , Greta Garbo's usual cameraman . The motion picture lavishly produced by Saul David was well realized by Mark Robson. In the early 40s Robson was much involved with the low-budget terror unit in charge of producer Val Lewton , for whom made ¨Seventh victim¨, ¨The ghost ship¨, and ¨Island of the dead¨. In the late 1940s Robson joined Stanley Kramer's independent company and directed his biggest commercial hit to date with ¨The champion¨. Years later Robson made another good film about corruption in boxing world titled ¨The harder they fall¨ with Humphrey Bogart. In the late 1960s, his work did decline . His last movie was a jinx one titled ¨Avalancha express¨. Robson and his main star, Robert Shaw, died suddenly from heart attacks. And of course , ¨Von Ryan Express¨ was one of his best films . A top-notch cast , spectacular images , tense images and noisy action help make this one a superior effort of its kind . Well worth seeing , this is the ordinary War movie that Hollywood does so well . This one is certainly one of the best movies ever made about the WWII escapes . Rating : 7 . Two thumbs up , essential and indispensable watching for WWII lovers , a real must see.

Sinatra is a cool American, whose P-38 is shot down over Italy in August 1943... The Allies were landing in Southern Italy, when Ryan is brought to an Italian prisoner of war camp... Sensing that the end is underway, the Italians were trying to get out of the war, and the Nazis were trying to keep the Allies out and the Italians in... A Fascist bully (Adolfo Celi) has ruled the POW camp, but with the collapse of Italian rule, he is thrown out... The British prisoners - professional soldiers of the 9th Fusiliers, whose constant attempts to escape have led to half rations and the withholding of medicine - headed by a heated Major (Trevor Howard), are not in agreement with the unpopular pilot, Colonel Joseph Ryan... They think him insufficiently hostile to the Italians and have given an insulting 'von" to his name, insisting that he is in the wrong army... The British get along with Ryan, however, when the escape is engineered... They seize a German train, and, impersonating German troops even as they evade German pursuers, try to make a run for it to the Swiss border... The viewers can forget about realism from that moment on... 'Von Ryan's Express' is pure adventure and courts no moral dilemmas in its story... Director Mark Robson tries to combine the suspense of 'The Great Escape' with the exciting action of 'The Guns of Navarone,' and he's successful enough... The pace is quick... The Italian locations are attractive... The confrontations with German troops are well handled... Ryan is a pragmatic character not unlike the far more tragic Col. Nicholson in 'The Bridge on the River Kwai.' As a colonel master-minding commando raids, he brings the film to a great climax on an Alpine viaduct... With the exception of a strange and shocking scene where a sexy escapee is gunned down in the back, ' Von Ryan's Express' gives us the necessary thrills to be pleased...

Released in 1965 (and starring a noticeably scrawny, 50-year-old Frank Sinatra as the title character), I honestly found this WW2, hero-worship, drama to be hardly worth getting very excited about. With its decidedly weak, paint-by-numbers storyline, this film certainly pushed the limits of daring and resourceful heroics just a little too far for their own good. If nothing else - This 2-hour war/drama (set in 1943 in Italy) definitely went well out of its way to prove to its audience that the Nazis were all just a bunch of bungling "dummkopfs" (natch). And, in the same breath, this film repeatedly reinforced Colonel Ryan's complete adaptability and quick-thinking as though it were his second language, or something. Anyway - For me, the comical highlight of this picture came about in a scene involving a pair of nylon stockings. I mean, you really need to see this scene for yourself in order to believe it in all of its utterly laughable absurdity.

Mr Sinatra brings his Las Vegas schtick to the European theatre of war.He plays a USAF Colonel whose plane is shot down in Italy(and that can't have been easy).He is captured and ,complete with nifty band-aid,sent to a prisoner of war camp run by that nasty Adolfo Celi(complete with nifty corset). He is very grumpy(what did he expect - Room Service?)and not popular with his fellow Americans(all four of them). Mr Sinatra does not feel that trying to escape from the camp at this late stage in the campaign,balancing the risks against the likely benefits,is a worthwhile exercise.The British contingent led by uber-grump Mr Trevor Howard clash violently with his opinion which amounts to Camp policy as he outranks the Brit major. At this point the film could have developed into an interesting study of conflict between the two senior officers but John Sturgess is no David Lean and "Von Ryan's Express" trundles up the track already trod by countless second-rate war movies . Music Hall Italians who make "'ello 'ello" seem like "Bicycle thieves" and Germans who should seriously consider contacting the Race Relations Board are outwitted or slaughtered by POWs escaping after the end of the campaign as predicted by Col Sinatra,during a train ride to more northern climes. The ultimate body count must make "Where Eagles Dare" seem like "Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day".I'm amazed the Germans had enough blokes left to make a go of the rest of the war. I hope with all my heart that nobody has ever taken "Von Ryan's Express" remotely seriously.It is gratuitously insulting to combat troops of every European nation that fought in the second world war.Bernard Manning would make a more convincing Air Force Colonel than Mr Sinatra,but he wouldn't look as snazzy in a brown leather blouson. "I took a trip on a train.....and I thought about you",he crooned on "Songs for Swinging Lovers".Well,he got it half right.If he'd really thought about anybody but himself he'd have got on a bus.

During his acting career, Frank Sinatra took a lot of hits from people who thought he couldn't act. While his early films are a tad rough, I've always thought this criticism was entirely undeserved. With films like SUDDENLY, MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and this film, he proved pretty conclusively that in addition to singing, he was a heck of an actor. I wonder if some of the criticism of Sinatra was more a criticism of him as a person. Sure, he was in many ways difficult, but say what you want about this--he still could act. In VON RYAN'S EXPRESS, Frank plays the leader of a huge group of soldiers who escape from an Italian prison camp. The Italian government is in shambles and the soldiers have no desire to press the war, but when an entire camp of Allied soldiers bolts, the Germans come in force to stop them and save face. This is a big scope picture--with exciting prison camp scenes, chases, railroad scenes, etc. While not the best prison film I have seen, it's among the best and apart from a small handful of films (such as THE DIRTY DOZEN and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE), it's one of the best of the genre made in the 1960s. Give it a look--you won't be disappointed.

"Von Ryan's Express" is overall a satisfying WW II actioner. The movie is long but never boring, there's some excitement and suspense, and some action. The only problems I found with the movie is that the above is at the expense of characters - not enough time is given to these characters, so we don't have as much of a personal stake - so whether the characters live or die doesn't matter as much as it could have. Also, some of the special effects, even for 1965, are somewhat embarrassing. It's still a good movie, and it's worth watching - it's just not the classic it could have been.

I watched this on Hulu.com last night. Early on I was really struck by the location footage, convincing grimy sets, dark cinematography, and the inability to guess where it was all going. All of this is pretty amazing for the time, and for a Sinatra vehicle. Even after it was clearly only going to be a pot-boiler, I was willing to keep watching. But by the ninety minute mark all of its potential is pretty much expired, as it anxiously rushes to become something much smaller; a prison break movie. It's clearly only going to be a piece of escapism. And things begin to drag. The premise (of the Oh-Come-On! variety) becomes ridiculous, and a bundle of moments constructed to raise tension just made me roll my eyes. The only way the movie could be of interest is if the escape was a true event. It's not. So every belabored, manufactured moment of the last hour (It's too long) damages more and more of the good will created in the earlier, better half. It just tries much too late to become "meaningful." Some aspects of the production don't even try to look like the early forties. The female role is completely out of 1965. Trevor Howard plays another Brit pain in the arse.

Told by associates that he needed to branch away from the "Rat Pack home movies" he'd been doing since The Manchurian Candidate, Frank Sinatra signed on for this 1965 POW epic that ranks as among his best films. Colonel Joseph Ryan is shot down in Italy in August 1943, around the time of the Allied invasion of Sicily. Hidden from the Germans by Italian soldiers, Ryan winds up in a prison camp run by the sadistic Battaglia (Adolfo Celi, best known as Emilio Largo in 1965's James Bond epic Thunderball). The primary residents of the camp are the members of the Royal Army's 9th Fusilleers, headed by Major Fincham (Trevor Howard) and a few American prisoners. Fincham and the 9th Fusilleers have been waging their own private war against Battaglia, and when their commander dies (one of several trying to escape), British resistance hardens. But with Sicily on the ropes, Italy is bound to quit the war, and with malaria breaking out, Ryan, now senior among the POWs, is convinced by the other American prisoners that the camp needs to cooperate with Battaglia and get medicines and so forth. This is the moral dilemma that begins the rocky relationship between Ryan and Fincham and his men. Ryan shows Battaglia escape tunnels dug by the POWs in exchange for medicine, bath water, and clean clothes, but is betrayed by the camp commander. So Ryan gives an audacious order, one that embarasses Battaglia (and brings humor to Captain Oriani, his XO and a officer who sympathizes with the prisoners) and leads Ryan to a sweatbox to rot away, a punishment that earns him respect by the British prisoners. But when Italy surrenders a few days later, Fincham puts Battaglia on trial, even though, as Ryan points out, with Italy out of the war, Battaglia is now a civilian. Ryan convinces the vengeance-minded British to stuff Battaglia in the sweatbox to rot, which angers the more vengful Fincham. But they all have to put their squabbles aside as the Germans are marching into Italy. Ryan leads the prisoners on a march across the land, but they are captured by the Germans and placed in a train for a German Stalag; making it worse, injured prisoners are slaughtered (off camera but clearly heard) and the one who betrays Ryan and Fincham turns up long enough to quietly gloat - and earn seemingly permanent hatred by Fincham toward Ryan. But Ryan isn't through yet, as he leads a daring second escape, seizing the train, only to have to keep going north to escape detection, with their one chance being a one-way trip to neutral Switzerland.

Loads of WWII action as Sinatra leads band of Allied POWs in theft of prison train and attempted escape run through Italy to Switzerland. Many tense moments and spectacular location photography create a realistic feel even if the basic plot is pretty far-fetched. After all they've been through, when Trevor Howard is still calling Frank "Von Ryan" an hour into the film you figure The Chairman is going to punch him senseless but that never actually happens. Memorable final scene. One of my favorite war movies.