Boys' Own

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE

Directed by Guy Hamilton Screenplay by Robin Chapman and George MacDonald Eraser

The word Navarone may appear in the title of this movie, but never once does it escape the generally stiff lips of the characters. The word's function is to remind us of the secret mission to blow up the guns in the grand old adventure saga of 1961, and to stir hopes that we are in for more of the same 18 years later. In other words, this is an implied rather than an actual sequel. In the new film the lines behind which our guys are operating are Yugoslav. The mission of Force 10 is twofold: to kill a traitor who has been betraying Partisan secrets to the Chetniks and to destroy a bridge over which the Germans must mount their big offensive. The late Robert Shaw and Edward Fox are in charge of the former activity, Harrison Ford the latter.

As is customary with Alistair MacLean, whose work inspired the picture, there is enough plot for three movies, not quite enough characterizations for one. Fox, as a demolition expert toting around a suitcase full of devilishly clever explosive devices, does do his best to compensate for a cardboard part with another of his amusingly off-center performances. Shaw is hearty, as was his custom in recent times, but Ford, bereft of the kind of writing that made comic capital of his essential sullenness in Star Wars, makes one of the gloomiest central figures in the history of adventure films. Richard Kiel, the giant steel-fanged heavy of The Spy Who Loved Me, beats on many people, including Barbara Bach, who will be remembered from the same James Bond affair. Carl Weathers, a.k.a. Apollo Creed, is an angry AWOL improbably mixed up in the mission. What a bunch!

Director Guy Hamilton, who has also done his share of Bonds, has a gift for moving this sort of nonsense right along, and the special effects, when everyone finally gets around to blowing up all the concrete in sight, are persuasive enough. There are occasional moments of violent excess (a decapitation, the sadism visited on Bach) that uncomfortably remind us of the harsh realities of war.

That sort of thing is best left to serious movies; it has no place in films that are basically in the Boys' Own Adventure tradition, which even little kids understand are intended to glorify the heroic ideal. In such entertainments, the background events should be as undisturbingly abstract as that of a Road Runner cartoon. -- Richard Schickel

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