Von Ryan's Express (1965) This is the sort of movie that begins with some explanatory writing on screen.
Presumably, it tells us what year it is, who's shoving it up whose arse and
where all this crazy crap is going down at. I say "presumably" because I never
read those things. I'm watching a movie here - not out at the library looking
for a book. Besides I didn't need to know anything other than what was on the
front of the DVD. Twentieth Century Fox was kind enough to put a sticker on the
shrinkwrap of this movie letting me know that it contained an "action packed
POW escape", like it was some sort of cereal that had a new marshmallow shape
or something.
I settled in to watch what I assumed to be the antics of a rugged
play-by-his-own-rules and make-it-up-as-we-go-along American and his stuffy
British pals as they bedeviled the Krauts with their Colonel Hogan-esque escape
plans. I guess I should have read the little informational blurb at the
beginning of the movie after all, because it turns out that we won't be making
boobs out of just the Germans. The first hour actually involves us outsmarting
the Italians which probably ranks up there with taking candy from babies and
tricking the Indians out of Manhattan. The Germans show up in the second hour once they realize that a bunch of smelly
and unarmed POWs have left their prison camp and are hotfooting it across
Italy. They fare a little better, but they still end up losing a train full of
our guys to two dudes with a rope. After watching Frank Sinatra and Trevor
Howard in action, I was wondering why the war took as long as it did. It turns
out that all you needed was a guy who could speak good German, some Kraut
uniforms, and one of those plans so crazy that it just had to work. I'll give it to this movie - it was full of surprises that even a seasoned
veteran of these "action packed POW escape" films couldn't have planned for.
The movie springs its biggest one on us right at the beginning. We're in Italy
and an American bomber crashes. I wasn't surprised that the downed pilot was
Frank Sinatra what with him being the star and all. What I was surprised about
was how old he was. Once I got a gander at his craggy features I began to realize why it
did take so long to win World War II - all the soldiers went to bed after Wheel of Fortune was over in the afternoon.  I did some checking and Frank was somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty years
old when he made this movie. Fifty! Old Blue Eyes was more like Old Paint in
this one. It didn't take long for his aging body to become an issue (and a
threat to the war effort). Every time this guy had a scene that required him to
run, it looked as if he was a fifty year old man running! This guy should've
been a greeter at Wal-Mart, but I was supposed to believe that he was dodging
spotlights, climbing buildings, crawling inside false ceilings and rolling off
trains? I kept waiting for him to break a hip or at least pop some Doan's
pills.
I don't want to ruin the movie for any of you guys out there with a fetish for
watching senior citizens battle the Axis powers, but you didn't have to be in
the AARP to see problems for Frank when the final scene required him to run
after a train while a bunch of Jerries shot at him. The only suspense in that
scene was whether Frank would keel over from a heart attack before the Nazis
pumped him full of lead. I mean, Frank was so old, they issued him a MedicAlert
bracelet instead of dog tags. In any case, after he gets shot down, he's hauled off to an Italian POW camp
that's mainly populated by British soldiers and he becomes the senior officer.
Shoot, when you're that old I don't think you could help but be the senior
officer. The guy who used to be charge just croaked from being put in the
sweatbox for awhile. You may know the sweatbox better as a "cooler". This is
a little cell the bad guys lock you in to punish you when your latest whacky
escape plot is uncovered. Ryan (Sinatra) demonstrates the superior intelligence of a superior American
officer by telling the Brits that Italy is only a few weeks from liberation and
that they should just ride things out as easy as possible. The Brits, led by
Trevor Howard, are of the opinion that it's their duty to try and escape and
that if only one guy makes it out, they did their job. Trev also tries to
impress Ryan by listing off all the famous historical battles his company (the
ninth Fusiliers or Musketeers or something) fought in, like one with Napoleon.
To my mind all Ryan had to do was to tell them that George III could have sure
used their help against some nobody named George Washington, but it looked
like all these crack English chaps were good at was getting captured. Trev tries to keep control of the camp, but Ryan tells him that as senior
citizen, he's in charge and that as of now all these stupid escape attempts
will cease and that the cafeteria will now be serving two flavors of Jell-O. He
gets the nickname Von Ryan because the Brits see him as some kind of
collaborator with the Italians. The Italians agree to let them have showers,
delousing, and their red cross care packages again since they've agreed not to
try and escape. Ryan then has all his boys strip down and burn their clothing
in an effort to force the Italians to provide them with new clothing. See, now
why didn't Trev think of that when he was in charge? Because all his British
brain power was focused on digging tunnels and hiding radios in coffee pots and
the like.  Von Ryan gets the sweatbox for his trouble and is let out a few days later
after all the Italians have fled and the POWs have been left to their own
devices. Thankfully they keep their clothes on and their lighters in their
pockets this go round and are more interested in doling out some rough justice
on the Italian leader of their camp. Ryan convinces everyone just to dump him
in the sweatbox instead of killing him, prompting Trev to whine about how lame
Ryan is and how none of his boys better die because Ryan has gone all soft.
Further demonstrating the early onset of Alzheimer's that he has, Ryan then
begins to trust an Italian captain who had been helping run the camp and they
decide to all march out to some ruins and meet up with some boats on the coast.
Trev is against trusting this guy and says he'll just give us up to the
Germans who are running around the area. Ryan pooh poohs all that and the next
thing you know they're all being herded into a train by the Germans that
captured them at the ruins! But it wasn't like Trev was right or anything. It turned out that that plan
was so dumb, the Germans didn't even need anyone to tip them off. You start to
think that maybe we shouldn't be worried about whether we can trust Captain
Oriani (the same guy who played Teocrito in The Giant Of Marathon), but whether we shouldn't get some kind of guardian appointed for Colonel
Ryan. Trev spends most of the first part of the train ride scowling at Ryan and
complaining about all the POWs his dunderheaded plans had gotten killed so far.
Ryan shows us some of that good old fashioned American know how and never say
die no matter how ill-equipped you may be to deal with a given situation
attitude that has gotten us where we are today when he starts tearing up the
floor of the boxcar. He and some of his posse drop out the bottom of the
train and roll clear of the wheels and you're hoping that Ryan's Serenity
Guards are empty when he started because they sure as hell will be full once
he's out from under that train. After taking over the train (and you knew as soon as you found out a train was
involved in this film that it would be taken over) Ryan concocts another plan
to escape, this time through the Alps across the border to Switzerland. This
leads to a series of tense moments aboard the train and at various pit stops
and culminates in a big battle in the mountains where Ryan's train is being
attacked by German airplanes as it goes in and out of tunnels.  I was afraid when I started this that I would be watching some lame rehash of The Great Escape, but this turned out to be about guys getting involved in shootouts on trains
as opposed to three hours of guys digging tunnels. The two big knocks to throw
against this movie is the fact that Sinatra is clearly too long in the tooth to
be doing any of this convincingly and that other than Sinatra's character, no
one else in the movie stands out so that you can even remember their name, let
alone anything about them.
Trev is probably your second biggest character in this movie and the only
personality he has is that he doesn't like Ryan. Other than that we don't know
anything about him or even care whether he escapes or not (real Americans will
be rooting against his survival because of his lipping off to the Chairman of
the Board). Even though you're hoping that Sinatra's dentures don't come loose when he's
heaving grenades at the Germans, he's playing a character that displays a bit
more depth than someone like Steve McQueen's character in The Great Escape. Ryan makes bad decisions throughout the picture and realizes what stinkers
they are and has to live with all the POWs his dumb ass gets killed. He even
has to shoot a woman in the back! The last scenes with the trains and the
mountains bring things to a solid close and the ending isn't what you would
expect from one of these POW movies. The good outweighs the bad in this one
and fans of war-adventure movies shouldn't be let down by it as long as they
place a premium on action over character and don't mind watching grandpa play
war hero.
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