Watch The Guns of Navarone For Free

Excellent adaptation.

Better than most people think

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A famous film signed by J. Lee Thompson, with many great names. I've seen it many times. When I was a teenager I liked it. Watched once again in May 2018, I did not like it so much, it is too slow, too long, too monotonous, too exaggerated. It's nice to see Anthony Quinn again, back to Greece, being Greek again. As for the "great" Gregory Peck, as far as I'm concerned, like Clint Eastwood, he was just another American with a big carrot in his ass, always.

This film tells how the Allies sought to destroy a pair of German super-guns, placed in a fortress on a major naval strait in Greece. The film emphasizes from the start the damage that cannons do to allied plans and the surplus value that would come if they were destroyed. So, a group of British soldiers, backed by Greek resistance, will try to penetrate the fort undercover to break up with the guns. Okay, I am the most vehement supporter of the quality of this film, but as drama more than as a war movie. In fact, it does not have many action and reveals itself much more stopped, slow and reflective than a war movie usually is. Here we don't see the emotions, adventure or danger that is dormant in "Where Eagles Dare", based on a book of the same author and shot a few years later. On the other hand, the great seriousness and dramatic rapport of the cast led by David Niven, Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn, makes the film much heavier and denser, helping to highlight the dramatic face even more so that the public almost forgets the war. The cast is luxury and they are all up to the challenge. There are no freshmen. All are great actors, with experience and a great talent.

An excellent and exciting 2nd world war film with a quality cast led by the wonderful Gregory Peck as Mallory. I am guessing that Mallory, a world famous climber was named in honour of George Mallory of Everest fame. A small team of experts are sent to totally destroy two massive guns built into the cliff top of a small Greek island. Time is important as they have to save the lives of 2,000 men trapped on another island who are about to be attacked by an overwhelming force. The only route for 5 destroyers is past the guns. I am now going to have to criticise the premise of this classic film. Why would the Germans put these massive guns in the middle of the Aegean sea just in case? Why couldn't the ships just pick another route which did not go past the guns ? The 2,000 men were not all going to die. If overwhelmed, they always had the option of surrender.

The Guns of Navarone is one of those films that has clearly aged in a lot of aspects and still offers a lot of replay value even 50 years down the line. Directed by action/adventure expert J. Lee Thompson and written by High Noon scriptwriter Carl Foreman, this film is a peculiar example of the adventure genre done right.The film presents a straightforward goal: WWII is raging on and two enormous German cannons are placed in a cave on the Greek island of Navarone, sinking all ships that enter its firing range. Rather than attempting a frontal assault, a small team of six Brits and Greeks are ordered to infiltrate the island by boat and blow up the cannons. We follow them as they narrowly survive mother nature and encounters with Germans and along the way their dispositions toward the mission and each other change.Like I said, this film has aged…mostly well. There are a lot of things that you can't really watch with a straight face. Peck's acting is a bit hammy at times and the way the tension between Peck and Quinn's characters is resolved is as symbolic as me shouting in your ear is subtle, but overall, this film manages to excel in terms of action without disregarding character development as so many modern-day action flicks tend to do.According to the trivia section on IMDb, Gregory Peck was disappointed by how many viewers failed to properly identify Navarone as anti-war and though I can understand his frustration, I think this has more to do with the style of the film than the intended message. When I think 'anti-war', I think of films like Kubrick's Paths of Glory with its clearly delineated anti-war morals. Navarone however, is first and foremost a bundle of (exciting) action set pieces. Of course there is drama, some of it still really effective, but the film's many action sequences are crucial as they define the film as just that – an action film – because these scenes tend to lack some sense of symbolism, underlying the futility of war, etc. In other words, there's anti-war stuff to be found here, but it's overshadowed by the amount of Hollywood spectacle.In the end, not every war film needs to be an in-your-face anti-war ad. The Guns of Navarone is first and foremost an exciting adventure film, excelling at many of the tropes that have made the genre popular. Even 50 years later, Navarone has a lot of replay value and (though occasionally campy) is still fun to watch and genuinely exciting.