Much like its predecessor, Force 10 from Navarone is fairly monotonous, but less eventful and of less quality.If the sole purpose of the film was to get the man from "Jaws" and Jaws in the same film, well it's a winner. In fact it has a pretty star studded cast, you've got Han Solo, Apollo Creed, The Jackal and Barbara Bach who also in the film with Jaws. Though much wasted talent I'm afraid. Watchable, but nothing too memorable about it. The characters and dialogue quite dull.

This movie made Einstein roll in his grave as it explained how its easy to blow a 20m thick dam rather than a 2m thick bridge with steel arches and this is only the most annoying flaw among-st 20 other that i really tried to disregard since it was a classic movie but unless people in 1978 were as sharp as a baseball bat i assume they gave similar reviews, if you re a movie critic and for some reason they had to torture you,this will be their most effective method. of course as in all bad things their most be some good and in this whole trainwreck the only remedy that kept me in my extremely painful seat is Harrison ford,that man should go straight to heaven for he having to play a role in this waste of human man power,redeemed all his sins.

It actually took me a few minutes to realise that Gregory Peck and David Niven had morphed into Robert Shaw and Edward Fox for this real-time follow-up to the 1961 hit war- movie "The Guns Of Navarone". That was almost as bizarre as the producers handily dropping the "Navarone" name into the title trying to catch a wave from 17 years ago in a film which has nothing to do with the earlier location.Once you get past that and accept that Harrison Ford has to be the youngest US Army colonel ever conscripted this is an enjoyable old-fashioned war movie although it does seem as if it belongs to another era of movie-making completely. Thus we get the usual Alistair MacLean ingredients of reluctant male-bonding, another traitor in the midst, for no apparent reason at all, a beautiful woman in a central part and of course, a big destructive finish.Shame that the would-be blockbuster finish is so obviously based on model-work but I guess SFX at the times had still to leap to the C-Gen stage. The characterisation is pretty much as you'd expect with the Germans portrayed as stupid and heartless, their partisan collaborators as heartless and stupid, with all the brains, courage and teamwork coming from Mallory and his cell. I could however have done without the racial baiting of Carl Weathers' black maverick soldier, quite unnecessary and unforgivable in a film made in the late 70's.The acting is as solid and stolid as you'd expect, Shaw and Fox demonstrating a stiff upper lip and Ford trademarking American moxy as they all start off distrusting each other but of course wind up as bonded-by-fire buddies by the end.It's fair to say I think that MacLean's writing and movie direction of this style was looking very clichéd and anachronistic this far down the line. That said, I'm a pretty old-fashioned type of guy and even though I found the characters stereotyped and the plotting unoriginal, I still got some sort of enjoyment from watching it.

It's a James Bond reunion of sorts as director of more than a few Bond movies Guy Hamilton directs Robert Shaw (in his last movie) a young Harrison Ford and a few Bond stars in a thoroughly enjoyable army picture, that is good old fashioned family viewing. I watched this with my 9 year old son, and we're both fully entertained. Plot In A Paragraph: Mallory (Shaw) and Miller (Edward Fox) are sent to Yugoslavia to find and kill Nicolai a traitor who informed the Germans about Miller and Mallory during a previous mission in Navarone. To get to Yugoslavia, the two men pair with "Force 10", an American unit, led by Lieutenant Colonel Barnsby (Ford), which has its own mission there.With a few exceptions all the cast are fine. Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed from "Rocky") is solid. Myy favourite Bond girl Barbara Bach is as good as I've seen her (admittedly I've only seen her in a couple of movies. One being my the James Bond movie "The Spy Who Loved Me") and i am surprised she never had a bigger career. Richard Keil (Jaws from James Bond) does his usual bad guy routine and Michael Byrne is his reliable self as is Edward Fox.It is not without its problems, some of the fight scenes are awfully staged, and their is obvious use of miniatures. Shaw's accent was very distracting to start with (I'm not sure if he dropped it, or I forgot about it) and Ford's acting was dire in his first scene, but thankfully it improved.