Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Leofwine_draca OPERATION AMSTERDAM is a strong WW2 movie with a great premise: a team including a Brit and two Dutch are sent into Amsterdam just as the Nazis are invading the country. They've been tasked with retrieving a priceless cache of diamonds from the city's jewellers and thus preventing them from falling into German hands. Along the way they must contend with German mines, bombing, Fifth Columnists, and the German soldiers who have already begun arriving in the city.It's one of the strongest backdrops I can remember seeing in a film and the suspense goes through the roof from the outset. What I liked about OPERATION AMSTERDAM is that, despite the outlandish premise, the whole thing is rooted in realism; there are no gung-ho heroics, just characters struggling through as best they can. The production values are excellent and while there isn't a wealth of needless action in the film, a climactic firefight is expertly choreographed and one of the best filmed ever (eat your heart out, HEAT!).The cast is very fine and includes Peter Finch in a solid hero-type role. My favourite character was that of the lovely Eva Bartok, who plays a resistance fighter with courage and determination, even more so than the men she helps. The real star of the show, though, is director Michael McCarthy, who had previously only helmed TV fare and low budget B-films. In OPERATION AMSTERDAM he was given a proper budget and ran away with it, although the success was bittersweet; he died in the same year the film was released.

JoeytheBrit Unseen Nazi jackboots are marching into Holland in the darkest days of WWII and Churchill's government is worried about all the industrial diamonds lying around in Amsterdam that could be used for the German war effort. Being British, we're obviously not going to rely on Frenchy to nip across and spirit the city's entire stock away before the invading hordes arrive so we send a rather colourless secret agent in the form of Tony Britton, the son of an Amsterdam diamond merchant (Peter Finch) and another chap who just seems to be along for the ride (Alexander Knox, who looks worrying dispensable throughout but somehow manages to emerge from the entire escapade unscathed).Our unlikely heroes hitch a lift to Amsterdam from a distraught Eva Bartok who has just witnessed her boyfriend's boat being bombed by the Luftwaffe and is about to drive into the harbour waters to look for him. At first they fear she might be a fifth columnist, but she turns out to be a plucky heroine, picking up the machine gun of a fallen resistance fighter to sullenly strafe the enemy at one point.Operation Amsterdam is one of those films that deserves to be better known because it's really quite good. The location photography of an eerily near-deserted Amsterdam is effective, and the tension is ramped up quite nicely until the whole thing seems to run out of steam in the final reel as our heroes make their getaway. The problem is that nobody is really aware that they are in fact getting away because their exploits haven't yet been uncovered. Anyway, when the film isn't testing our heroes it's commenting on the unenvious position in which the City's diamond merchants – many of whom are Jewish and only too aware of the treatment meted out to their creed by the Nazis. One old chap tries to bargain a place on the boat back to Britain for his sick, elderly wife but is gently rebuffed.Perhaps the film's main weakness is the suspicion that something wasn't quite right during post-production. Midway through, the film seems to take a disconcerting leap forward, and suddenly there's little Melvyn Hayes sitting in the back of a car with our fellows. Now where did he come from? A neighbour of hero number three's mum, apparently (so that's why he tagged along), although we're never see this mother-and-son reunion – even though you suspect the scenes were filmed.

rangeriderr I had never heard of this movie until I stumbled across it on Instant Netflix. I just loved it and found it to be more exciting than I could expect. It was extremely realistic and had many strong aspects.The B&W photography was perfect. It totally captured the despondent feeling of the day, between the deserted city streets and the road to the harbor packed with refugees -- old & young. The scenes with boats in the water clearly looked like film stages, but the street scenes looked very realistic. One reviewer seemed to imply that they were actual streets.The editing was extremely tight, perhaps just a little too tight, as some other reviewers have commented, since it wasn't totally clear why there were Dutch soldiers fighting the "good guys". Yes, there was the comment that you couldn't tell who the fifth columnists were, but one does not expect the fifth columnists to be soldiers in Dutch uniforms.The music fit the film perfectly -- between the street organ and the snare drums. But what especially contributed to the suspense were the times when the film was virtually silent and the camera switched from one face with tension to another. One reviewer commented on how little Alexander Knox had to say, but his expressions, along with his silence, actually added to the tension. Overall, the casting was perfect.Eva Bartok was superb. I can't recall ever having seen an actress who was so beautiful seem so realistic. (If you read her biography at this site, you can understand why she played her role so convincingly. She had already suffered considerably, being forced to marry a Nazi officer at age 15 who continually raped her.) Nothing was overplayed by her or by anyone. As opposed to all the James Bond type movies these days, this was far more realistic, and the tension was palpable.I've now started to watch the film a second time (about 20 minutes so far), which I think this movie lends itself to doing. When you watch it the second time, you pick up many clues that become important as the story unfolds, such as the Dutch soldiers who are, indeed, Nazi sympathizers, and the policeman on the dock, in an early scene, who thinks that the spies are additional Germans in disguise, like the parachutists dressed in civilian clothes, whom he had already shot. The terse dialogue and context for many of these opening scenes may be missed the first time around. Also, when watching it again, one has the opportunity to catch more of the details and verisimilitude of the film.

Rickee This movie has a premise with a lot of potential: a small group of agents has a just 14 hours to get into Amsterdam and take out all the industrial diamonds there. But the movie is ruined by three gigantic flaws.First, it is incompetently edited. It is obvious that some key scenes were left out and as a result, the plot is hard to follow. For example, at one point the agents go off to visit the mother of one of them. The next time we see them, they are back from the visit and have a new character, Willem, with them. All we get is a one sentence explanation for who he is and why he is with them.Second, the motivations of the various Dutch army units are baffling and never explained. Some of them help the agents while others try to kill the agents. At some points, different Dutch army units shoot at each other. We are never told why some of them are trying to kill the agents. Are they disloyal soldiers trying to help the Germans? Or do they believe that the agents are working for the Germans? Or do they think the diamonds should stay in Holland even if it is overrun by the Germans? Or do they think the Germans will fail to capture Amsterdam and, thus, it is unnecessary to take the diamonds out? Third, a group of about a dozen Dutch civilians help the agents get diamonds out of a bank safe and blow up a oil storage facility. It is never explained who these people are. They are not the Dutch underground. That was formed only after the Germans overran Holland; but this movie is set before they'd captured Amsterdam.