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Review: The Guns of Navarone (1961)
I'm quite surprised that I didn't find this movie very engaging. I normally love teamwork adventure movies. And this movie did have some fun tense moments.
But perhaps some of the tropes wre a bit dated and old to me as someone watching in 2022, and the war background just wasn't very interesting to me either. In addition, I did let out a groan when I first played the movie and saw that it was 2.5 hours long, so maybe that coloured my enjoyment of the movie in general.
Spoilers.
Story
Most of the background information we needed was provided at the beginning through text. The important big was that our protagonists, on the side of the allies, needed to destroy the two guns of Navarone.
The plan that the allies concocted to destroy the guns was to scale a cliff and destroy the guns from within. At the very beginning of the mission, the team members were introduced all at once, which was perhaps why they didn't stick out to me much compared to the other characters for which we had individual recruitment scenes, like Stavros and Maria.
During the climb up the cliff, Major Franklin got injured and eventually became somewhat of a liability for them. He would later be left with German forces who the team had hoped would take him to get proper medical help, which was frankly a really naive wish and I don't know why they ever thought it would work. Probably to show how noble the Allies were or something. Anyway, Franklin was interrogated and tortured by the Germans, and he leaked bad information to them.
There was kind of a weird camaraderie story line with the Butcher? At first he was kind of cold and not really a team player and then later he was like "I want to be part of the team now!" It was clumsily handled and could have entirely been done away with as it added nothing to the story.
The team stumbled upon Anna and Maria, who would help them with their mission. However, it was revealed that Anna was forced into being a spy for the Germans, and she was the one who kept sabotaging the group. Maria killed her, obviously very upset at the betrayal as she thought they were friends.
While the team was in town, there was a wedding party going on, and I thought it was a cliched that the characters were like "oh, this is fun, these folks are super nice." It was meant to show us that the civilians were super innocent and that our team was doing the right thing by trying to protect them. It was just a bit heavy handed.
Stavros and Maria also had a really weird romantic story line, if you could call it that at all. There was barely any chemistry between them istg.
Eventually, the team made it to the facility where the guns were. Their explosives had been sabotaged, so they found another way to destroy the guns. They escaped, and from their boat, they watched the guns fire a few rounds before exploding, showing that they had succeeded.
Stavros and Maria are implied to get together. And the blood feud that Stavros had with Mallory was now wiped clean (???) because of this one mission they did together?? That was the most insane part to me. Stavros held this huge grudge against Mallory because he felt Mallory was responsible for the deaths of his wife and kids. How does working together on one occasion cancel that? It made no sense to me.
So as you can see, this could have been a good adventure teamwork movie, but so many of the personal story lines were so clumsily handled.
Production
The acting and the set design was generally fine. It was well done. I did notice that for example some of the driving scenes were done in front of a screen, but it didn't happen so often that it was distracting.
Characters
It's really hard to say that most of these characters had personalities at all.
Keith Mallory was supposed to be the hero, but he wasn't even a hero archetype. He just felt like a blank slate to me. All I knew about him was that he used to climb, that he once tried to be kind and noble and got stabbed in the back for it, and that he didn't think the mission would succeed.
As I mentioned, with the characters that were introduced in that briefing with Major Franklin, I found it really difficult to remember them or what was special about them.
The first person Mallory met individually was Andrea Stavros. They had a sour history, but Stavros had another top priority at the moment, so he kind of put his grudge aside to do that. Per Mallory, Stavros only tolerated him because Mallory would help him kill Germans, and that he'd kill Mallory after the war, because him being lenient on Germans led to the death of his family. So I find it really fucking dumb that Stavros would just forgive Mallory at the end of the movie (fully and completely! they were bros!) because they had done one(1) thing together. Yes, destroying the gun was huge, but if Stavros' goal was to kill all the Germans, he was far from done.
We met Maria and Anna, the token girls I guess. Maria was Spyros' sister, and she was supposed to be the more feisty one. She was eventually Stavros' love interest, I guess, though nothing suggested they were interested in each other other than them saying it out loud. There was no chemistry.
Anna was set up to be Mallory's love interest, with that one cuddle scene they had, and so it made sense that they tried to angst it up with making her the spy. I do like that it was Maria who took out Anna in the end though. Maria trusted Anna so much, it was she who convinced the others that Anna was good. So Anna betrayed her trust.
Overall
I could see myself enjoying this if I was a bit younger, as this could still be a fun adventure story, but the war background and the clumsy execution of tropes was just too distracting for me to enjoy this.
But perhaps some of the tropes wre a bit dated and old to me as someone watching in 2022, and the war background just wasn't very interesting to me either. In addition, I did let out a groan when I first played the movie and saw that it was 2.5 hours long, so maybe that coloured my enjoyment of the movie in general.
Spoilers.
Story
Most of the background information we needed was provided at the beginning through text. The important big was that our protagonists, on the side of the allies, needed to destroy the two guns of Navarone.
The plan that the allies concocted to destroy the guns was to scale a cliff and destroy the guns from within. At the very beginning of the mission, the team members were introduced all at once, which was perhaps why they didn't stick out to me much compared to the other characters for which we had individual recruitment scenes, like Stavros and Maria.
During the climb up the cliff, Major Franklin got injured and eventually became somewhat of a liability for them. He would later be left with German forces who the team had hoped would take him to get proper medical help, which was frankly a really naive wish and I don't know why they ever thought it would work. Probably to show how noble the Allies were or something. Anyway, Franklin was interrogated and tortured by the Germans, and he leaked bad information to them.
There was kind of a weird camaraderie story line with the Butcher? At first he was kind of cold and not really a team player and then later he was like "I want to be part of the team now!" It was clumsily handled and could have entirely been done away with as it added nothing to the story.
The team stumbled upon Anna and Maria, who would help them with their mission. However, it was revealed that Anna was forced into being a spy for the Germans, and she was the one who kept sabotaging the group. Maria killed her, obviously very upset at the betrayal as she thought they were friends.
While the team was in town, there was a wedding party going on, and I thought it was a cliched that the characters were like "oh, this is fun, these folks are super nice." It was meant to show us that the civilians were super innocent and that our team was doing the right thing by trying to protect them. It was just a bit heavy handed.
Stavros and Maria also had a really weird romantic story line, if you could call it that at all. There was barely any chemistry between them istg.
Eventually, the team made it to the facility where the guns were. Their explosives had been sabotaged, so they found another way to destroy the guns. They escaped, and from their boat, they watched the guns fire a few rounds before exploding, showing that they had succeeded.
Stavros and Maria are implied to get together. And the blood feud that Stavros had with Mallory was now wiped clean (???) because of this one mission they did together?? That was the most insane part to me. Stavros held this huge grudge against Mallory because he felt Mallory was responsible for the deaths of his wife and kids. How does working together on one occasion cancel that? It made no sense to me.
So as you can see, this could have been a good adventure teamwork movie, but so many of the personal story lines were so clumsily handled.
Production
The acting and the set design was generally fine. It was well done. I did notice that for example some of the driving scenes were done in front of a screen, but it didn't happen so often that it was distracting.
Characters
It's really hard to say that most of these characters had personalities at all.
Keith Mallory was supposed to be the hero, but he wasn't even a hero archetype. He just felt like a blank slate to me. All I knew about him was that he used to climb, that he once tried to be kind and noble and got stabbed in the back for it, and that he didn't think the mission would succeed.
As I mentioned, with the characters that were introduced in that briefing with Major Franklin, I found it really difficult to remember them or what was special about them.
The first person Mallory met individually was Andrea Stavros. They had a sour history, but Stavros had another top priority at the moment, so he kind of put his grudge aside to do that. Per Mallory, Stavros only tolerated him because Mallory would help him kill Germans, and that he'd kill Mallory after the war, because him being lenient on Germans led to the death of his family. So I find it really fucking dumb that Stavros would just forgive Mallory at the end of the movie (fully and completely! they were bros!) because they had done one(1) thing together. Yes, destroying the gun was huge, but if Stavros' goal was to kill all the Germans, he was far from done.
We met Maria and Anna, the token girls I guess. Maria was Spyros' sister, and she was supposed to be the more feisty one. She was eventually Stavros' love interest, I guess, though nothing suggested they were interested in each other other than them saying it out loud. There was no chemistry.
Anna was set up to be Mallory's love interest, with that one cuddle scene they had, and so it made sense that they tried to angst it up with making her the spy. I do like that it was Maria who took out Anna in the end though. Maria trusted Anna so much, it was she who convinced the others that Anna was good. So Anna betrayed her trust.
Overall
I could see myself enjoying this if I was a bit younger, as this could still be a fun adventure story, but the war background and the clumsy execution of tropes was just too distracting for me to enjoy this.