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If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Roger Moore is the commanding officer of a Nazi POW camp on the Greek coast. His main task is to use three prisoners ... David Niven, Richard Roundtree and Sonny Bono ... who are experts in antiquities to retrieve valuable archaeological relics for the Reich. A pair of American entertainers ... Elliot Gould and Stefanie Powers ... are picked up by the German army near the camp and became it's latest guests. Moore is not particularly sympathetic to the Nazi cause, so he teams up with his 3 experts and Greek partisans lead by Telly Savalas to take over the camp and steal some extremely valuable items from a nearby mountaintop monastery. This film is clearly meant to cash in on the success of "The Dirty Dozen" and it's imitators, most notably "Kelly's Heroes". It's characters are mostly morally questionable folks who walk a thin line between noble intentions and naked self-interest. In addition, many of the characters, Gould and Bono being the clearest examples, are just raging anachronisms who have stepped right out of the 1970's and into WWII. Unlike "The Dirty Dozen", this film just does not work for me. Major plot points are just frankly unbelievable (the Greek partisans use a brothel that caters to Nazi officers as their headquarters), and the action, when it finally comes, is rather flat and uninteresting. Great cast though ... although Moore should have never ever ever tried to do a German accent.

A great cast cannot save this poor film. It is meant to be set in WW2 but everyone appears to have 1979 hairstyles and talk in 1979 language. It was meant to be tongue in cheek I think but it just comes across as over the top and not even remotely realistic.When the Germans are setting up their rocket towards the end the operators have crash helmets with obviously 1970's reflective mirror visors.None of the starry cast can really say they put in a half decent performance. Elliott Gould in particular hams it up for all he is worth and at least he looks like he had fun making it. Roger Moore as a German is not realistic either. At least he (sort of) attempted a German accent. Telly Savalas was maybe just getting over the disappointment of Kojak finishing as he was uncharacteristically poor in this. Even Richard Roundtree, so cool as Shaft, looks like he couldn't be bothered.Overall a poor film with poor performances and very much lacking in realism.

If one asked why does the press and critics hate "this movie" and they would have loads of different answers on whether it has a rather poor plot and its either silly or overdone and this World War II adventure titled Escape to Athena is no exception being among the worst films to be premiered during 1979 and there is every possibility that this movie almost looked a bit like a remake of The Guns of Navarone classic due to similarity of filming locations supposing centred around the Mediterranean. Even so, the casting of Roger Moore, Telly Savalas and David Niven plus many more clearly seemed to be totally wasted in this utterly inept movie where they seem to be enjoying the roles they should never have played until they realise it when this one crashed in the Box Office and by look of it, has World War II crept into the computerised security era of 1979 some 34 years after it supposed to have ended? At the same time as well as starring as James Bond in Moonraker, Roger Moore had also filmed another failure movie, this one being North Sea Hyjack. Either Moore didn't take film roles seriously enough and can't act or was he typecast as Simon Templar or James Bond and seemed to parachute helplessly into unsuccessful films.

It's always weird for me to see an actor who played James Bond in another movie from that period of their 007 career. This would have to be the weirdest so far.Roger Moore plays an antique collecting SS Officer stationed in Greece during WWII who runs a prison camp. In this camp, which more or less resembles a resort, are David Niven (also a former James Bond,) Richard Roundtree (Shaft!,) and Sonny Bono (the ex-Mr. Cher.) In a 'Hogan's Heroes' type set-up they annoy Roger Moore and his evil SS colleague (played by Anthony Valentine) by always trying to escape. When they are caught, instead of being put to death they are given a slap on the wrist. You see, it turns out that Roger Moore isn't a bad Nazi, he's just an opportunist, which we learn when two American art dealers, played by Elliot Gould and Stefanie Powers, arrive. He and the three prisoners and these two Americans plan on stealing some treasure hidden in a local monastery. When the Germans lose the war, they'll make millions.Meanwhile, Telly Savalas (a former Bond villain) plays a Greek resistance fighter who is holed up in a local brothel run by the vampy Claudia Cardinale. He plans on liberating the Nazi prison camp and destroying a German submarine.After an overlong and dull second act, it turns out that the Nazi's have turned the local monastery into a secret launch pad for a deadly nuclear bomb. Telly leads Mr. Cher, Shaft, and Elliot Gould up the cliffs to the monastery while Moore, Niven and Stefanie Powers get to work on destroying the German submarine.If only any of it were exciting. This movie is only good for seeing such a big, interesting cast in such a big disaster of a WWII adventure. The most egregious offender is Elliot Gould, whose character seems like he's right out of the 70's, not the 40's. In fact, this whole film seems to take place in some alternate reality where WWII continued on into the late 1970's.