Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

nerdomatic10-937-667230 This flick was in heavy rotation on TCM recently; I guess because it was Steve McQueen's big break. He does a fine job, as does Charles Bronson, but "NSF" is a perfect unintentionally funny, entertainingly bad movie. When Frank Sinatra was genuinely interested in playing a sympathetic and vulnerable character in a top-notch movie, he was most excellent. "The Manchurian Candidate" is one of the best films ever. But most of the time his ego was totally out of control, and that's definitely the case here. He looks like the 98-lb weakling "before" in Charles Atlas's body-building cartoon ads, and is laughably unconvincing as a jungle warfare commando. Frank weighs about 120 lbs here, and there's good reason why he never took his shirt off in his flicks. He's skinny, but not in shape. Don't get me wrong, he went through an entire telephone book of gorgeous women, so he clearly had what it takes in real life. But watching him play a Lee Marvin-type guy just doesn't work, not even for a second. He looks very scrawny in his fatigues and wears an immaculate bush hat with one brim turned up on the side, Australian-style, along with possibly the worst beard in movie history.Frank's romance with Gina Lollobrigida is pretty comical, although it's not meant to be. Gina plays a kept woman being employed by a wealthy war profiteer, but he conveniently drops out of the picture whenever Frank's around. Gina is stunning, but is a terrible actress. Luckily, she knows how to breathe deeply while wearing low-cut bodices. Frank's romantic patter is no more convincing than his tough-guy banter: "I'll keep you barefoot and pregnant and living on the edge of town." Of course, a world-class beauty steeped in luxury would immediately fall head-over-heels for such a smooth line. Frank was one of Hollywood's greatest ladies' men, so he fully realized the silliness here, but he played it straight and never winked at the audience. Throughout the entire movie, Frank is able to frequently switch back and forth between the jungle and Gina's hotel suite. Not a bad deal."NSF" is based on a WWII novel written by Frank's character, and it's probably an interesting book, but the movie fails to do it justice. He's a U.S. military adviser training Burmese Kachin tribesmen to wage guerrilla warfare on the Japanese. There's a lot of great exterior shots of the Burmese countryside and cities and temples and monuments, but everything else was filmed on Hollywood sets, presumably so the Chairman of the Board could hit the LA bars immediately after completing his scenes for the day. So the combat scenes are excruciatingly and distractingly fake-looking. One big moment is when Frank and his men paddle silently downriver to a huge Chinese encampment in broad daylight. Hundreds of soldiers, and every last one of them is in a deep and restful sleep, including the sentries. They're all piled up on top of each other, even though they have plenty of room all around, and seem to enjoy napping in an enormous cluster. Frank's men surround them and they meekly surrender when Frank orders them to. Much to their regret, because Frank later orders them all shot as a demonstration of his ruthlessness. The Kachin are appropriately servile and grateful to their Great White Saviors. They actually apologize to Frank when they get shot and have to die in his spindly arms. One of them gets badly wounded and the unit doesn't have any medicine or a doctor, so Frank shoots him to put him out of his misery; just like you'd do to a loyal dog. At least the poor guy doesn't say "Thanks, Frank" before the Chairman pulls the trigger. Even Mr. Sulu from "Star Trek" is there and plays pretty much the same part as he later does in "The Green Berets", another inadvertent howler.Anyway, this flick is well worth the time, although not for the reasons its makers intended. I only gave it a 6, but for entertainment value it really rates much higher. Bad-movie fans are guaranteed to find every moment enjoyable in a perversely satisfying way.

Joxerlives Frank Sinatra was never the greatest actor although he's good in The Manchurian Candidate. He seemed to make a lot of World War 2 movies perhaps as recompense for never having actually served in the conflict, suffering a burst eardrum at birth which made him ineligible (ironically a man widely regarded as America's greatest singer was partially deaf all his life). The Good; some exciting action sequences especially the raid on the airstrip. Great supporting cast, the then practically unknown Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Hong, Walter Takei. Very obvious allegory for America's increasing involvement in Vietnam, military advisors working with jungle tribes, unreliable allies (the Chinese Nationalists substituted for the South Vietnamese), a conflict where troops are forbidden to cross an international border in pursuit of the enemy. Watching it today you are struck at just how damn ruthless Sinatra's character is, not only shooting one of his mortally wounded men in order to put him out of his misery but arbitrarily executing traitors amongst the tribes-people, torturing a captured Japanese soldier for information and massacring hundreds of prisoners. In the modern world he'd find himself on trial for war crimes but in 1959 this seems not to have troubled the audience (perhaps because this was a generation that had been through the brutality of a World War and Korea, perhaps simple racism?).The Bad; Sinatra's romance is just stupid and never convinces. Someone tell Steve McQueen that you can't hit anything if you take the butt off your Thompson and if you tape your magazines together with the lips down you're just going to get a jam (you get the idea that he was trying to make himself distinctive, much like his playing with his hat in The Magnificent 7). In fact McQueen's character looks like he's walked in from a far inferior film. Equally Sinatra is able to kill the three Chinese officers sitting around the table but somehow miss their girlfriends with one long burst, something I don't even think the Delta Force would be capable of.All told not a great film but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Bill Slocum "Never So Few" fails in so many ways; as a treatment of the Burma campaign in World War II; as a tough-nosed action picture; as an involving melodrama; and most especially, as a vehicle for star Frank Sinatra.Sinatra was too busy playing soldier and practicing his cool look to bother constructing an interesting character; a strange bitter vibe hangs over his performance. Oddly, it was another actor who managed to take the little "Never So Few" had to offer in the way of career advancement: Steve McQueen. Up to this point, he had done "The Blob" and TV, but his comfortable natural bearing around Sinatra's star wattage shows he could hold his own with the big boys, even when the script gave him little to work with.McQueen is Sgt. Ringa, a jeep driver who finds himself drafted for more dangerous duty when commando leader Tom Reynolds (Sinatra) takes a shine to his street-smart ways. Reynolds leads a small band of Kachin fighters in the hilly jungles of Burma, continually harassing a Japanese force many times its size."A regular Abe Lincoln in North Burma" is what rich merchant Nikko Regas calls him. Regas is part of the other story in "Few", the man whose girl (Gina Lollabrigida) Reynolds wants. The exotic Lollabrigida and the world-weary chain-smoking Sinatra are clearly meant to invite comparisons to Rick and Ilsa, and Paul Henreid cements the impression by playing Nikko as much the same character he was in "Casablanca".None of this comes together, though. In fact, the two parts fail to co-exist at all. You get 20 minutes of war followed by 40 minutes of earnest love talk, then back to the war. The war scenes are about as competently directed as an episode of "The Rat Patrol", with idiotically sequenced insert shots (like soldiers shooting up at people we then see falling in a river) and noble, servile Kachin dying with meek apologies to "Dua" Reynolds. War is hell for Tom, who loses both his monkey and his favorite gun caddy, a faithful Kachin who hands him a new automatic every time Reynolds empties a magazine on the enemy.The romance is even worse. Sinatra and Lollabrigida have no chemistry, she can't act, and director John Sturges' idea of story advancement is to focus on her bustline and hope you don't notice the dialogue. And what dialogue!Him: "I hanker for you alone."Her: "Why don't you go back to the hills and play with your popguns!"Henreid warns Lollabrigida he won't let her go then disappears for the rest of the movie, leaving Lollabrigida and Sinatra to kiss like dead fish in front of bad process shots.The film generates a bit of interest an hour or so in, when Reynolds and his men discover the Japanese are not the only force they have to fight. But the resolution of this angle is both trite and ugly, involving the wholesale slaughter of captured prisoners while the camera focuses on Sinatra, looking so sad his previously disapproving medic (Peter Lawford, better than usual here) has to pat his shoulder to let him and the audience know it's alright.McQueen at least mines his on-screen time to showcase his talents as an action man, and occasional scene stealer with the aid of handy props, like a slice of watermelon or a mortar. Competing with Charles Bronson, Brian Donlevy, and Richard Johnson as Reynolds' monocle-wearing British pal, McQueen hardly has to break a sweat.The worst performance here is Sinatra's, who just drips with self-importance, whether wearing an ugly goatee (Mitch Miller must have really got to him) or trying to sound like Hemingway with stiff lines like: "You have tasted the pain of wound in combat." Sinatra was not just good but great in parts where he allowed himself to project insecurity. But too often, when permitted to coast, he gave performances like this one, showcasing the boor he could be in life from time to time."Never So Few" drags for more than two hours, long enough to listen to four of his Capitol albums. Guess which is a better investment of your time.

mryerson In and of itself, the idea of 97 lb. weakling Frank Sinatra playing an action hero is preposterous. I'm sorry but Mr. Sinatra might have struck a certain manly chord in a six hundred dollar suit, holding a highball glass and a smoldering Chesterfield but with his Hepburn neck and delicate shoulders he's miscast here. The plot, apparently based on some real life derry-do, is nonetheless implausible with Sinatra's ratpack jocularity trumping rank structure and cultural norms, as though he's holding forth at an after-hours Vegas smoker. The film further labors under sundry staging goofs and the otherworldly appearance of GinafrickingLollobrigida in a little black cocktail dress and stilettos. In the Burmese Theater of operations?? Oi! Suspiciously convenient for the Chairman of the Board, I must say. When Sinatra walks through a doorway and finds Gina in soft focus, heaving a throaty sigh and prancing around in those patent-leather pumps, I'm reminded of Billy Pilgrim rooting around on a chaise with Valerie Perrine in outer space. In one action shot, two trucks are running next to each other and the men in one truck are machine-gunning enemy troops by firing directly 'through' the other truck! No, I'm sorry Frank Sinatra is a little thin in the hips to be an action hero. Peter Lawford always looks like he's trying to keep up with Frank and Frank is delivering lines which would never fly except that he's Frank Sinatra. Basically a cartoon. What the heck were Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson doing in this movie?