Allies

An elite group of British soldiers are put together to help an American Captain ambush a German general and capture detailed maps of German positions. They jump into France and after completing the mission escape to the rendezvous point. All has gone smoothly until now and it seems too easy for them. That’s until a German unit turn up to spoil the party and reveal that they have a traitor somewhere in their midst.

War is a horrible and wasteful thing and British film has often taken the war in two completely different ways. It either is harshly frank by satire or straight performance, discussing the horrors suffered and the lives destroyed or it locks you in too a thrill ride and sticks two fingers up at the all and sundry. Well this is the latter, a boys own blast full of bullets, blood and body parts. This is the sort of film made during the sixties and would fit superbly in with a marathon viewing of The Great escape and Where Eagles Dare. It is a nod to the Commando magazines I read as a kid and that opened my eyes to the Second World War.

Dominic Burns should be given an award for taking what is a minimal budget and getting this solid film out of it. Also the cast give it their all, making us laugh with them, cry with them and even get out of our seat and fist pump the splatter of gore. The idea to take war in this framing too some may be distasteful but I will say to them that they misunderstand this film. Recently British film has made a few turkeys that have not understood their genre or their audience (one which I discussed very recently about football for instance). This film is far from that sort of misfire at all, it had me engrossed and entertained. We have sex, violence and profanity aplenty and done both as homage to exploitation and knockabout fun.

We may have seen this exploitation inspired film done before and a lot better but this film is a proper belter, cracking fun and everyone who worked on it deserves a massive pat on the back for giving it a superb go!