Do you get some random tune just appear in your head for no reason and you just can’t shake it. Well it happen to me while shopping with the wife in Tesco this morning and by time I got home it was doing my head in thinking why this why now.
The tune was ‘Lili Marlene’, which was swirling around my head. Soon has we got in I did an internet search with nothing jumping out at me. Then that eureka moment, thanks to me old friend YouTube I found a film called ‘Play Dirty’ at was what I was thinking about I was sure. I was trying to remember the films name the other week. Its a British war film and YouTube had a full copy, result.
The film opens with about the best opening sequence I think I had ever seen in a film with one of the film’s stars Nigel Davenport playing Capt. Cyril Leech. He is driving across the desert in a jeep with Lili Marlene blaring out of the radio just has he reaches British lines he changes channels and plays You are my Sun Shine.
The film is a superior war movie, fast paced and cynical. The group who are picked for the mission are ex-criminals and other lowlife and receives comments at it is a rip-off of The Dirty Dozen. I don’t agree this film stands on its own.
Captain Douglas (Michael Caine) is the other officer as they lead a band of mercenaries into the desert. He is none too eager to do any fighting but his order to go. Leech is promised an extra £2,000 by his commanding officer if he gets Douglas back alive. Their mission is to go 400 miles to knock out an oil installation. Leech (Nigel Davenport) is the experienced mercenary hired to help guide Douglas and his group through the dangerous behind the lines mission. Leech and Douglas have their different opinion on how to successfully carry out the mission.
Disguised as Italians, our motley crew heads into the desert coming across a group of Arabs at the water hole. They are friendly at first toward Leech and his men thinking they were Italians but when Douglas gives the game away, Leech shoots them. They are forced to take another route leading to an interesting set piece where they have to get their vehicles up a cliff by hoisting them. As they finish this task, they have a grandstand view of the slaughter of the back-up group sent by Brigadier Blore in the valley below. The Germans eliminate this unit with extreme prejudice. Leech prevents Douglas from intervening.
No mission goes without a problem and while searching around some wreckage one of the Arabs is wounded by a mine. They ambush an ambulance and find a German nurse who puts up a good fight until Leech knocks her out. Later, three of the men attempt to rape the nurse who puts up a strong fight but the wounded guy shoots one of them in the backside.
They are six days behind schedule and out of contact with their base and now the plans change with the British wanting the oil installation intact.
They are six days behind schedule and out of contact with their base and now the plans change with the British wanting the oil installation intact.
They reach the objective and infiltrate through a minefield during a sand storm but it was a fake site. Douglas decides to find and destroy the really fuel dump. The British wanted the fuel dump for the advancing British. They informed the Germans through a double agent leading to most of the group being killed even the nurse left at the ambulance, killed by the wounded man before he died.
Disguised as German soldiers Leech and Douglas managed to escape only to be shot dead trying to surrender.
My Rating
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