Stevecorp
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Ceticultsot
Beautiful, moving film.
MoPoshy
Absolutely brilliant
rdolan9007
I will declare an interest at the outset because my late grandfather actually fought at the battle of Anzio(which he did survive. Therefore I was interested to see how the film dealt with Anzio. This unfortunately is a disappointing film, although not terrible by any means. It tries to be ambitious, with an anti-war stance but ends up as a strangely tame film to become a quite conventional heroic war movie. The film is not particularly realistic, and lacks a sense of danger. There are major characters killed of but you won't have any real feelings for them.This film is not helped by the fact it does suffers from the Hollywood(US) perspective. This largely ignores the British effort, and concentrates on the American action at Anzio. The film as a sop perhaps tries to compensate for this by heavily criticising the American generals. Although the British command made mistakes, in reality the American generalship was far worse and genuinely appalling The thinly disguised General Clark who is the character Gerneral Carson, was an egotistical moron, who threatened to shoot any British who arrived in Rome on the day 'he' conquered Rome. This unsurprisingly is not in the film, but you can certainly understand why Anzio was a near disaster, when you had idiots like that in charge.Strangely enough Anzio bears comparison to Saving Private Ryan in structure, both start with a beach landing although as the film does get right Anzio was unopposed unlike Utah beach. The film like Saving Private Ryan then concentrates on a section of American soldiers, and their actions. There is also like saving private Ryan an allied plane attack which at the end which plays an important role in the final outcome.The film unfortunately lacks the savage intensity of Anzio. The town of Anzio, and its surrounds was under constant and intense Artillery bombardment from the Germans. There was also constant pressure from German infantry and the conditions were reminiscent of the first world war. This state of affairs was to last in a very bloody stalemate for three months, before a breakout was achieved. You simply don't get any impression of that intense and constant pressure however being placed upon the allies from the film. There is none of the sense of fear and dread, that being confined to those few miles of land around Anzio actually had on the allies. Therefore the film ends up disappointingly conventional and ignores the reality of the conditions in Anzio.The acting is patchy, with only the characters playing the American generals and Kesselring really worthy of note. Peter Falk's performance as a playboy GI is out of kilter with the film. I like Peter Falk, but here his performance is ham-fisted, and unconvincing. Robert Mitchum is a good choice for the lead, and that face can do war weary better than most. Yet as Hollywood demands, despite being a cynical war journalist, he takes over the action and he gets to kill the last German sniper.So you won't get any insight worthy of note about Anzio from this film. It doesn't bother to try and create a realistic overview of what actually happened at Anzio. As this film was made in 1968, I'm not particularly surprised by the emphasis on the American war effort, therefore I'm not particularly upset by it. It bears so little reality to what Anzio must have been like that I can't judge it as a historical war film like the longest day, or a bridge to far. This is just a war film with a title that tries to lend it some historical credibility. It has little or none, so I would not take it seriously.There are it is true sporadic moments of interest and excitement, some of the battle scenes are well done, especially when some American units are ambushed by German tanks. The final action scene with the plane strafing the sniper and Robert mitchum trying to kill the sniper is well done as well. It isn't enough however dramatically, or historically accurate enough to sustain your interest.
oscar-35
*Spoiler/plot- Anzio, 1968. A well know war correspondent becomes involved in the Anzio landings and becomes part of the many US Army units histories and victory. *Special Stars- Robert Mitchum, Peter Falk, Earl Holliman, Authur Kennedy, Robert Ryan.*Theme- War accomplishes nothing, but sometimes does.*Trivia/location/goofs- Italian. Shot around Rome, Italy. Peter Falk in his 2006 auto-biography 'Just One Thing: Stories of My Life' states that he didn't like the script for this movie which he thought was hackneyed and full of cliché. Falk wanted to leave the film for these reasons. However, producer Dino De Laurentiis encouraged Falk to stay by giving him film poster name-above-the-title credit as well as choice of writer for his dialog. Falk stayed on the picture and apparently actually wrote his own dialog. The "Black Devils" was the nickname of the 1st Special Service Force, The Devil's Brigade (also called The Black Devil's and The Black Devils Brigade), a joint American-Canadian commando unit organized in 1942. Continuity problems with historic personal troop's infantry weapons, tanks, and aircraft. Many war film clichés' abound in this film and many not sensible in logical modern warfare. It does have many overdone scenes with: whores, smart-ass and lovable Hollywood obsessed soldiers, war correspondent with a heart, and finally with minefield and sniper field tactics. *Emotion- A bad and hugely flawed war film with a 'message' from old Dino 'Red Ink' De Laurentis. This films plot is peppered with overused and boring dramatic scenes like the sniper battle, minefield escape, rowdy bar fight, young G.I. finding his first love, German Fieldmarshal barking orders to subordinates, and war corespondent who is anti-war. The main musical theme is a pretentious sad love song that is run the whole time of this sad film...YUK! Better films of this war theater and era are "A walk in the Sun", "Big RED one" or "Go for Broke". This film can out and was one year before the Oscar wining film production called "Patton" with it's opposing & more interesting war message.*Based on- Clichéd' popular 60's message war films.
AaronCapenBanner
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.
Theo Robertson
It's always a bad sign when a film's theme tune sounds nothing like the genre it's claiming to be . THE BAT for example features a funky jazz tune and boy was that film a pile of rodent droppings and alarm bells started ringing when the opening credits of ANZIO started where a war weary corespondent played a very possibly drunk Robert Mitchum marched through a military HQ to the sounds of a Frank Sinatra style swing song ! Yeah there's nothing quite like a war film to get you on your feet grooving away , bah bah bah bah bah bah bah ANZIO isn't an awful film but it's far from being a great one either with the script being the major problem . It opens one of those light hearted scenes of with over paid , over sexed and over confident US soldiers that we've seen far too many times before . I guess it's supposed to be amusing but it's not . Eventually the film lives up to its title and shows us what went wrong at the Anzio landings with the American generals Clark and Lucas not driving inland quick enough . This is a fairly good history lesson since it paints a fairly poor picture of American leadership in Italy . Remember in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN , BAND OF BROTHERS and A BRIDGE TOO FAR Monty is painted as possibly the most incompetent allied General of the war ? This was nothing compared to the ridiculous mistakes made by Clark and Lucas during the Italian campaign , though somewhat cowardly this film renames Clark as " Carson " and Lucas as " Lewis " which is a great pity because a history student could do worse than watch this film , though if they did they'd notice like a great number of war films made during this period ( BATTLE OF THE BULGE is a good example ) that both German and American tanks are from a different generation but the Anzio landings here are more accurate than the ones seen in PINK FLOYD THE WALL After this the narrative then sadly settles down into a straightforward war film where the action could basically have taken place anywhere like France or the Phillipines where a bunch of GIs are surrounded by the enemy and have to make it back to enemy lines . As many people have pointed out on these pages the script is rather unfocused and slightly disjointed and I had a gut feeling that some of it ended up on the cutting room floor , for example we see the platoon escape from a house at night and almost immediately after the platoon are trapped by some German snipers in the middle of the day , though to be honest this isn't a movie that is afraid to kill off characters so deserves some credit alongside the historical accuracy
