rodrig58 A famous film signed by J. Lee Thompson, with many great names. I've seen it many times. When I was a teenager I liked it. Watched once again in May 2018, I did not like it so much, it is too slow, too long, too monotonous, too exaggerated. It's nice to see Anthony Quinn again, back to Greece, being Greek again. As for the "great" Gregory Peck, as far as I'm concerned, like Clint Eastwood, he was just another American with a big carrot in his ass, always.

jimbo-53-186511 A British team are tasked with entering occupied Greece and destroying a large gun tower on the island of Navarone. With the gun tower being heavily guarded by the Nazis, the team have to use their ingenuity to outfox the Germans.The Guns Of Navarone is a good story and to be fair it had enough going for it to hold my interest, but unfortunately it's a film that I found to be sporadically thrilling and compelling rather than consistently compelling and thrilling.The first thing has to be addressed is the length of the film and one thing I really don't like is a film that spends an awful long time just setting up the plot - sometimes this can work with complex plots that need to introduce several characters or films that involve interwoven stories, but where the plot is rather linear such as it is in The Guns Of Navarone I would have much preferred it if we'd have got to the crux of the plot much sooner (some of the earlier scenes felt rather redundant and didn't seem to do much to drive the narrative forward). Although the slightly plodding pace is more of a problem in the first half sadly examples of it are dotted throughout the film - director J Lee Thompson seems to use a lot of long takes which admittedly look good, but inevitably just add unnecessary length to the picture.The cast are a key to make this work and although David Niven has top billing (according to IMDb) it is very much Gregory Peck who is the lead actor here and he does a great job giving a rather calm and understated performance as the 'voice of authority'. David Niven is also excellent in what I would class as a 'supporting role' in this film.Still as I've mentioned it has enough about it to make it worth watching - although J Lee Thompson seems to have tried to turn this into some kind of epic he does mostly keep the story on track and it does slowly manifest itself into an intriguing battle of wits. It's certainly worth a look and probably would have been even better if the running time would have been trimmed slightly.

DKosty123 Real Art of making a film is on display in this one. The war fiction novel by Allistair MacLean proved to be a very great source to fashion a first quality script. The filmmakers then opened the film by simulating an actual World War 2 Documentary about Navarone in black and white which gives the opening such a feel of reality that a viewer would have to know this is fiction in order to realize it is not a documentary about the war.The cast for this could not be crafted any better. Gregory Peck is very good here. This might be David Niven's best film role and this is one of the very few times Anthony Quinn and Anthony Quayle are together in one movie. Both of them did a lot of solid films but rarely are they any better than in this one. James Darren, later to become a teen idol during the 1960's is here. Irene Papas has an important role along with Gia Scala though the ladies are not the main characters. Gia is important because her being Greek in a story set in Greece helps get the feel of reality.This film was important because not only was there sequels launched by it, but the concept of this film was used in several other films as well in the 1960's. Never were any done better than this one here. This one with a mission that seems impossible, yet so real in it's goal to secure the straight by the island of Navarone so that many ships in the royal navy are not sunk by these huge guns feels right in every aspect to a first time viewer.This movie does present the Nazi's as a very intelligent and capable foe. Their spy network seems to be ahead of the team every step of the way until very late in the movie. There i a very credible storm sequence that nearly derails the mission which is sort of a mini event that later would be expanded into the disaster type films of the late 1960's and beyond. This film has everything you would expect in a real story. Nothing is made too easy for accomplishing this mission for the team. Later films trying to duplicate this effort come close but never quit achieve the quality of this film.J. Lee Thompson, the director would go on to direct Cape Fear, the now classic film with Peck and Robert Mitchum the very next year is at the height of his career as these 2 films are his best efforts by far. Because these 2 films are his best, he is not as well remembered as a director as other ones because he only really has thee 2 films as crown jewels in his career. What a jewel this one is. After doing these 2 films back to back, no others would quite reach this one.The mountain blasting sequence in this one is one of the better special effects sequences of war films. The story and the cast plus the locations used pull the viewer into this solid film.

AaronCapenBanner Based on Alistair MacLean's novel, film details a group of Allied soldiers on a secret mission to destroy two massive German guns outside the sea of a Greek Island, in order to make an Allied troop evacuation possible, and also freeing up those waters to further the Allied war effort. Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, and James Darren among others round out the cast.Grand adventure film takes many interesting twists and turns, and also becomes philosophical at times(Peck has a memorable speech to Niven about responsibility, for one.) Director J. Lee Thompson stages the action scenes impressively, leading to an exciting climax in the gun's fortress. Pace occasionally slackens, but overall a solid and entertaining film.