Jeff (actionrating.com) Skip it – This was supposed to be a starring vehicle for Frank Sinatra. But this is romance, not war. There's some combat in the beginning and in the middle, but a lot of nothing the rest of the way. Sinatra's got a different rat pack in this one, made up of youngsters Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. McQueen steals the show in one of his earliest roles. But he's not in enough scenes, and the only action scenes are the one's he's in. The title of the film insinuates that never before has so much been owed to so few. That's funny, because never before have so few of my expectations for a good action movie been met. 3.5 out of 5 action rating

Jay Raskin There are three well done battle scenes in this movie. The scenery is fabulous. Gina Lollobrigida is gorgeous. All the secondary characters are well acted, including Dean Jones, Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen.The bad news is that the script and lead actors (Sinatra and Lollobrigida) are terrible. The movie mixes an absurd and unbelievable romance with a series of clichéd and unbelievable war situations.This may not be Sinatra's worst acting job, but of the ten or so movies I've seen him in, he has never been so wooden and dull. It seems as if he walked onto the set, did his lines in one take and went out to the nightclubs.Sinatra fans will probably enjoy the movie. Everybody else, not so much.

doug-balch The Good:Great early look at a young Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. Lots of big names otherwise, with Sinatra, Gina Lolabrigida, Peter Lawford, Paul Henreid and Brian Donlevy.Underlying story idea is a good one: a semi-factual recreation of OSS operations in Burma during WW2. Would be nice to see a modern remake of this movie due to the interesting subject matter.McQueen's first big movie role. Acquits himself well and his performance certainly helped propel him to his future starring roles.Gina Lolabrigida can't act worth a fig, but she sure is a whole lot of woman to look at.The Bad:I didn't buy Sinatra in the role for a minute. The casting of this pompous lounge lizard as a charismatic special forces officer is an insult to all veterans. Sinatra reportedly pressured the producers into kicking his good buddy Sammy Davis Jr. off the picture. This is ironic, because Davis actually served in WW2, while Ol' Blue Eyes was humping every starlet he could lay his hands on.And what was up with that Aussie-style hat Sinatra wears? The guy is living in a tent in a steamy tropical jungle mowing down scores of Japs with a machine gun and there's not a single smudge, sweat stain or wrinkle on his hat. It looks like he just picked it up off the rack in the Flamingo's tourist shop. I can just imagine the director, John Sturges, begging Frank to beat the thing on a tree stump for half an hour to make it look realistic and Sinatra refusing because the wanted a slicker look.The Sinatra role felt like it was written for Humphrey Bogart. This is especially apparent in what is supposed to be clever Bogie/Bacall style repartee between Sinatra and Lolabrigida. The casting of Paul Henreid, who starred with Bogie in Casablanca, seems no accident. I can imagine that Sinatra bullied his way into a role that was way, way over his head. As much as I would like to blame Sinatra entirely for this movie's failure, it should be noted that the script is the main culprit, especially the excruciating attempt at "snappy patter" between Sinatra and Lolabrigida. I don't think even Bogart could have saved this movie, but these two acting cripples have absolutely no chance.Sturges went on to direct a fantastic film, "The Great Escape" a couple of years later, so we'll have to cut him a break on this one.Reminds me of another star studded stinker, "The Way West", an unwatchable 1965 western that starred Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. That also had a director, Andrew McLaglen, who went on to do much better work.Bottom line: this is a great example of how important a script is to a movie. Here you had a panoply of big time stars and talent, a solid director, but the movie stinks anyway. Also, if your leading man is an actor of very narrow ability, you better make sure you cast him in a role that suits him.

zardoz-13 Frank Sinatra does his best Errol Flynn imitation in director John Sturges' "Never So Few," an uneven blend of romance and combat set against the exotic backdrop of the China-Burma-India Theater of World War II. Sinatra sports a goatee and wears his campaign hat with one side of the brim pinned back Australian style. Twenty minutes he shaves the goatee off and hangs onto the hat. When Sturges and scenarist Millard Kaufmann, who collaborated on "Bad Day at Black Rock," aren't shoe-horning into the narrative an unconvincing and superfluous romance between Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida and Sinatra, they tackle the racial intolerance. The callous U.S. Army authorities display intolerance toward the Kachin resistance warriors, even some of Sinatra's own men in his unit show their prejudice. The Air Force keeps dropping medical supplies in without enough chutes so the morphine supplies shatter on impact, and the Allied hospitals feed these tribes people food calculated to cause dysentery rather than stimulate their healing."Never So Few" is unquestionably too ambitious for its own good. Sturges and Kaufmann have our war-weary protagonist, Captain Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra of "From Here to Eternity"), perform a mercy killing on one of his Kachin infantrymen despite his colleagues' protests. You see, Reynolds' outfit lacks adequate medical supplies to prevent the fatally wounded soldier's needless suffering. When Reynolds proposes to put the Kachin out of his misery, second-in-command Captain Danny De Mortimer (Richard Johnson of "Deadlier Than the Male") objects. "You can't kill a man without murdering a part of yourself." Reynolds dismisses Danny's objection because he has killed a dozen men already in their last battle with the Japanese. As you can see from the outset, "Never So Few" doesn't want to be considered another exercise in hollow wartime heroics.Reynolds and Danny fly back to base and Colonel Parkson (Robert Bray of TV's "Lassie") has a jeep and driver, Corporal Ringa (Steve McQueen of "The Great St. Louis Robbery'), placed at their disposal. During an interlude in a nightclub, Reynolds decks Danny to prove Danny's claim that not even a blow can knock the monocle out of his eye. As both Reynolds and Danny sprawl onto the floor, Carla Vesari (bosomy Gina Lollobrigida of "Solomon and Sheba") enters the nightclub with her wealthy boyfriend Nikko Reggas (Paul Henreid of "Casablanca") and notice the two soldiers on the floor. Talk about an introduction! Carla and Reynolds wind up dancing arm-in-arm briefly and she decides that Reynolds isn't her type. Inevitably, these two diametrically opposite persons are attracted to each other. Reynolds has a difficult time convincing Carla to reciprocate his sentiments. She is attached to Reggas who provides for her every wish and comfort. Meanwhile, Corporal Ringa raises a little of his own hell. He decks two military policemen about the time that Reynolds and Danny are leaving the nightclub. Reynolds decides that Ringa must join his outfit and he convinces Colonel Parkson to reassign him.Furthermore, Reynolds demands that Parkson assign a doctor to his unit. Reynolds has been acting as the chief surgeon. Parkson orders Reynolds and Danny to take two weeks off. Initially, Reynolds objects, but they wind up spending time with Reggas and Carla. Danny comes down with cerebral malaria and the Army doctor, Captain Grey Travis (Peter Lawford) shows up. Reynolds has Travis assigned to his unit. Danny recovers and they return to the jungle to fight the Japanese. Reynolds is ninety-nine per cent sure that Carla has deep sixed him.As it turns out, Reggas is working for Military Intelligence. It doesn't help matters that the Henreid character vanishes without any notice. Later, after a big battle scene, when they destroy an enemy airfield, Captain Reynolds and his men cross over into China and wipe out the renegade Chinese mercenaries authorized by the Chungking government to kill all invaders both foreign and domestic, including American servicemen. Reynolds has a showdown with the brass over this incident. They want to court-martial him, but he presents evidence of Chinese treachery.If this plot summary doesn't whet your appetite, you should know that future superstars Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson flesh out of the cast. "New So Few" ranked as McQueen's first major movie, while Bronson turns in another solid supporting performance as Lieutenant Danforth, a Navajo Indian radio translator, long before John Woo made "Windtalkers" about the Navajo contribution to World War II. The cast is padded with lots of familiar Hollywood actors, including Robert Bray, John Hoyt, Dean Jones, George Takei, Mako, James Hong, Brian Donlevy, and Whit Bissell.Basically, the action alternates between the jungle and behind Allied lines as our heroes take the time to chill out, get drunk, fight, and upset their superiors. The same can be said about the production. Some scenes were lensed on location while others take place on an MGM soundstage. "Never So Few" is one of Sinatra's early forays into an all-action white-knuckler and ole blue eyes wields a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun and a British Sten gun. McQueen survives the fray, but Bronson bites the bullet. Sturges and Kaufmann depict World War II as "an unprecedented war. Sturges stages the battle scenes with his usual aplomb and the widescreen Panavision lens of cinematographer William H. Daniels, who lensed "Brute Force" and "The Naked City," add to the spectacle.Essentially, "Never So Few" opens with a controversial bang when Sinatra ices one of his own troops and ends with a bang when the Allies reprimand the Nationalist Chinese for letting their warlords indiscriminately murder American G.I.s! "Never So Few" qualifies one of those rare movies about the warfare in Asia with "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Objective, Burma" as the other two major films. Incidentally, a modicum of the action is based loosely on a true story.