Thursday, May 21, 2009

Never So Few.

One of my colleagues at work was giving away some of his DVDs.  I took a DVD he had of a movie Never So Few which had images of Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen on it.  Having never heard of the film, I wondered why.  The first thing that struck about watching it was that the DVD played up the part Steve McQueen played in the movie.  Though he had an important role in the film, McQueen was not originally billed as a co-star but part of a supporting cast that included Peter Lawford and Charles Bronson.  Sinatra originally shared billing with Gina Lollobrigida.  The film now is a curiosity piece more than anything.  While the film isn't completely awful, it certainly isn't great.  The language of the script was jarring.  Sinatra sports a goatee or piece of hair on his chin at the start of the movie, but thankfully removes it for the rest of the movie.  The film is set in the Second World War but the combat scenes look too much like combat scenes filmed in a studio where the stars are made-up between every shot.  For a war film to be realistic, the actors playing soldiers have to look like they are weighted down, not only by equipment but by exhaustion and dirt.  However, Gina is awesome and the fact that the film is shot in classic late-fifties, early sixties colour makes the film worth watching.

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