Review of Casablanca Express

Cheap Italian flicks, especially aimed at an international market, are always fun. It is like an Italian meal with some good dishes and some bad ones indifferently put together but served with panache. You know the plot by now, it is set in WW ll just before the Casablanca Conference where they have to move Prime Minister Winston Churchill there safely, in spite of a German plot to kill him. It takes advantage of the fact that Nazis had plenty of collaborators in North Africa amongst the Vichy French administration that the Allies left in charge and Arabs too. There is a secret agent trio, played by two star's sons and some pretty woman, then a couple of old heavy actors brought in as HQ high officer types. Basically it is "The Eagle Has Landed" in North Africa, right down to the German paratroopers, but told from the good guy's point of view. It is fun but nothing to take serious or go out of your way. It provides a lot of action, mainly a lot of machine gunning but little gore. It had the hijacked plot element in it, when the paratroopers took over the train full of a smörgåsbord of Europeans & North Africans. In this part of the movie, there was shameless sentimentality with a wounded girl, shot by the paras, being saved & a dying priest being ministered to by his Islamic seat mate.