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I purchased the DVD because it had B-25s in it, one of my favorite aircraft. I knew there was a love story attached, but it had Harrison Ford. Wow, where was the adult supervision when creating the screenplay?
The audience was never informed of the location of the film title 'Hanover Street'. I suppose that this was the London street where the two lovers first met, although this was never made clear.
I remember liking Leslie-Anne Down (Margaret Sellinger) from her appearance in the 'North and South' miniseries. I was surprised she was willing to take off her top to get into this film. She was so weepy and whiny in this appearance. The script made her the helpless slave of her hormones. She seems to be able to get free of her family responsibilities every other Thursday to meet her lover. Then she goes home to be the perfect wife and mother for her young daughter.
It would have been very dangerous for Margaret to continue these meetings, the chance of being spotted during one of these trysts would have been great. She could have provided a perfect opening for blackmail by the Gestapo. No doubt her husband's position in intelligence would make the Sellinger family the object of intense observation. Margaret could have destroyed her whole family this way.
Then there is the plot element where the identity of British double agents is kept in a safe at Gestapo Headquarters in Lyon, France. How are the British privy to such information? How credible is it? What better opportunity for a coup by the Gestapo could there be? The Gestapo arranges for the British to gain access to a list of effective British Intelligence Agents they wish to destroy. These men are arrested and possibly executed by their own government. A few expendable low-level operatives are placed on the list to enhance credibility. British Intelligence is devastated even more when the Gestapo ensures that the British find out that they were duped into destroying their own loyal agents.
Then there is the problem of British Intelligence Agents being caught and found dead. They would not have been found at all. They would have been wrung dry of all useful information and kept in secret confinement or more likely secretly executed and buried. The British would be kept in the dark about the fate of their agents to prevent them from learning from the mistakes that led to their men being caught. Uncertainty is a formidable weapon in an intelligence war.
Then there is the Harrison Ford character 'David Halloran'. He is hardly blameless in having an affair with a married woman. He pulls off her left glove to reveal a wedding ring at their first meeting. That deters him from pursuing his passion not at all. It was kind of gross to watch their love scenes with her wedding ring still on her finger. He hardly needed to focus on this woman, since plenty of eligible young women were hanging around the club on his airbase. He could see local women much more frequently than the forbidden flame in distant London.
The film shifts gears into a fairly conventional war film about halfway through. We are treated to scenes where David's bomber is hit by enemy fire so severe that all his crew are killed, yet it is still in condition to fly along for several minutes while he crawls about inside inspecting damage and holding a conversation with his passenger. The two survivors then parachute into a wooded area just before their aircraft explodes. The secret agent, in full German uniform, never the less carries about a miniature photograph of his wife, secure in the knowledge that the Germans are too stupid to notice it.
The two men parachute at night into the trees and drop to the ground under conditions that are strangely well illuminated for a woods at night. They then make no attempt to conceal their parachutes and stroll about calmly making small talk about matters of small importance to their survival or completion of the mission. The Germans strangely make no attempt to determine if any crew of the downed plane are still wandering about free on the ground. No wonder they lost the war!
I could go on, but there is not much fun to be had flogging this pitiful plot. Harrison Ford learned from this film and probably demanded to read the scripts before signing on to future projects. He was big enough at the box office to make his demands stick. He did manage to prevent type casting from the 'Star Wars' films and so the film had to go into the win column for Ford's career. Just look at the pitiful careers of Carrie Fisher and Mark Hammill post 'Star Wars'.
score 4/10
jehaccess6 28 June 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1900944/ |
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25-2-2021 06:05:12