The most suspenseful parts of the final act from THE GREAT ESCAPE a year after A PRIZE OF ARMS and the middle of the original decade-later STAR WARS had nothing to do with prison or space battles but hiding in plain site, behind enemy lines, while keeping everything in perfect surreptitious motion without getting noticed and thus, caught and captured...
Which ARMS is, from beginning to end, epitomizing the heist thriller where two British crooks with one German undercover-infiltrate a British military compound before an overseas mission since the armory will be loaded with cash... all for the taking...
That's the plan anyway, led by square-jawed no-nonsense Stanley Baker as a stern ex-officer partnered with British bad boy (and new guy/wiring expert) Tom Bell, who usually fitfully portrays thugs that argue with their superiors...
Herein Bell's bitter thus unpredictable personality enhances an already built-in nervy pace that... directed by veteran Cliff Owen with a story by Nicolas Roeg... has very little downtime as the eclectic uniform-clad gang shuffle through separate sections of the compound to undo various contraptions -- for the overall mission to work as a whole...
All the while dealing with various officers and their sporadic bulwarks (from providing paperwork for clearances or getting randomly questioned on the spot) to wind up in the right place at the ONLY time since every second counts...
Ending with how the initial freezing-nighttime practice-run prologue began, testing cinema's coolest weapon, the flamethrower, but the overall action is more subtle, providing Baker yet another strong yet equally vulnerable role while third banana Helmut Schmid, the mellow middleman with an accent to conceal, solidifies this perfect different kind of criminal trio.
Which ARMS is, from beginning to end, epitomizing the heist thriller where two British crooks with one German undercover-infiltrate a British military compound before an overseas mission since the armory will be loaded with cash... all for the taking...
That's the plan anyway, led by square-jawed no-nonsense Stanley Baker as a stern ex-officer partnered with British bad boy (and new guy/wiring expert) Tom Bell, who usually fitfully portrays thugs that argue with their superiors...
Herein Bell's bitter thus unpredictable personality enhances an already built-in nervy pace that... directed by veteran Cliff Owen with a story by Nicolas Roeg... has very little downtime as the eclectic uniform-clad gang shuffle through separate sections of the compound to undo various contraptions -- for the overall mission to work as a whole...
All the while dealing with various officers and their sporadic bulwarks (from providing paperwork for clearances or getting randomly questioned on the spot) to wind up in the right place at the ONLY time since every second counts...
Ending with how the initial freezing-nighttime practice-run prologue began, testing cinema's coolest weapon, the flamethrower, but the overall action is more subtle, providing Baker yet another strong yet equally vulnerable role while third banana Helmut Schmid, the mellow middleman with an accent to conceal, solidifies this perfect different kind of criminal trio.