15 Jun Play Dirty
Play Dirty, WWII Movie starring Michael Caine
(1969) This British film was part of the “An Officer and a Movie” series on the Military Channel. As is normally the case with the war movies made in the 1960’s this one did not show the official military in a good light.
The saving grace for me was Michael Caine who played a by-the-book British officer. His same-team adversary, plucked from prison, was played by Nigel Davenport. I enjoyed both performances.
The third character in the movie is the desert. Most of the movie was about how to drive over it, through it, in spite of it.
The sand. This is a part of World War II that is least familiar to me. It’s not fun to watch. I’ll bet it’s not that different than what our boys go through in the deserts of the Middle East today.
I have to admit that toward the end I was doing some fast forwarding but not at the ending.
OMG, the ending.
Joy
Posted at 17:06h, 17 JuneDo they mention in the film where they are in the desert (not just ‘North Africa’)? In 2006 I was in Libya for the solar eclipse and one of the tour members described driving in the desert during or after the war. He seemed too young for WW2, but he was older than he looked. Driving in the Sahara is quite an experience. The sand can get too hot for ordinary tires, and tanks can get bogged down. Not to mention the way sand gets into everything. There was a movie with Anthony Quinn, Lion in the Desert, that was about the resistance to the Mussolini regime. Many Libyans were confined in concentration camps. They showed this to us while we were riding in the bus on a longer leg of the tour in 2006. It is telling that they still show this film, esp. considering the events of the current day.
Pat
Posted at 05:18h, 18 JuneIn the beginning of the movie, Michael Caine was shown on a map where he was going, and according to Wiki, “the mission’s target was a fuel depot at the fictional Libyan port town of Capris Magna.” The movie was actually filmed in Spain. So you were right there where they were supposed to be!
Joy
Posted at 12:45h, 20 JuneLeptis Magna is one of the main Roman sites in Libya, with a magnificent amphitheatre and port. (It’s not in the Sahara, which is further south). It was because there were so many ancient sites from the Roman Empire along the Libyan coast that Mussolini liked to claim that it was ‘really’ Italian territory. Or, that was part of his nationalist ideology to justify the occupation . Doubtful of course that any oil depots would have been within the Roman ruins themselves, but it is a nice fictional conflation for the movie:>)There is an ancient Roman arch right in Tripoli near the souks and the Corniche also.