An allied guerrilla unit led by Capt. Tom Reynolds (Frank Sinatra) deals with the Japanese army and warlord controlled Chinese troops out in the Burma jungle."In the hills of North Burma, gateway to the vast prize of Asia, less than a thousand Kachin warriors, fighting under American and British leadership of the O.S.S., held back 40,000 Japanese in the critical, early years of World War II. It has been said NEVER have free men everywhere owed so much to SO FEW".Killer Warrants and The Unprecedented War.Directed by John Sturges and featuring Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Peter Lawford, Brian Donlevy, Gina Lollobrigida, Richard Johnson and Paul Henreid. Never So Few it's fair to say has a iffy reputation, originally conceived as a rat pack war film, it has some great strengths and some annoying weaknesses. The story itself is great, a part of the war that deserves to have been portrayed on the big screen, but why the makers didn't exorcise the whole romantic thread remains not just a mystery, but nearly a film killer.As lovely as Miss Lollobrigida is, her whole character arc, and the relationship with Sinatra's stoic Reynolds, is surplus to requirements. It serves absolutely no purpose to defining other characters or for narrative invention. This strand of the story carries the film to over two hours in length, without this strand it's a film of 90 minutes focusing on the brave souls who fought in the Burmese conflict. Which is what it should have been.When dealing with the conflicts, both outer and inner, the film does excite. The wily Sturges knows his way around an action scene and all the efforts here are gripping. Cast are fine and dandy, with McQueen dominating his scenes, Johnson the class act on show, while Sinatra, once he gets rid of the fake beard, shows his knack for tortured emotion to the point you just can't help but root for him even when he's being pig-headed (not a stretch for old blue eyes of course).Tech credits are mixed, the studio sets are easily spotted, but conversely so are the real and pleasing location sequences filmed in Ceylon. The Panavision photography (William H. Daniels) is beautiful, a Metrocolor treat, but Hugo Friedhofer unusually turns in a lifeless musical score. All told it's not hard to see why it's a film that divides opinions, it's very episodic and that romance drags it something terrible. But still strong merits exist and it at least gets the core of the real story out in the public domain. 6/10

Frank Sinatra was never the greatest actor although he's good in The Manchurian Candidate. He seemed to make a lot of World War 2 movies perhaps as recompense for never having actually served in the conflict, suffering a burst eardrum at birth which made him ineligible (ironically a man widely regarded as America's greatest singer was partially deaf all his life). The Good; some exciting action sequences especially the raid on the airstrip. Great supporting cast, the then practically unknown Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Hong, Walter Takei. Very obvious allegory for America's increasing involvement in Vietnam, military advisors working with jungle tribes, unreliable allies (the Chinese Nationalists substituted for the South Vietnamese), a conflict where troops are forbidden to cross an international border in pursuit of the enemy. Watching it today you are struck at just how damn ruthless Sinatra's character is, not only shooting one of his mortally wounded men in order to put him out of his misery but arbitrarily executing traitors amongst the tribes-people, torturing a captured Japanese soldier for information and massacring hundreds of prisoners. In the modern world he'd find himself on trial for war crimes but in 1959 this seems not to have troubled the audience (perhaps because this was a generation that had been through the brutality of a World War and Korea, perhaps simple racism?).The Bad; Sinatra's romance is just stupid and never convinces. Someone tell Steve McQueen that you can't hit anything if you take the butt off your Thompson and if you tape your magazines together with the lips down you're just going to get a jam (you get the idea that he was trying to make himself distinctive, much like his playing with his hat in The Magnificent 7). In fact McQueen's character looks like he's walked in from a far inferior film. Equally Sinatra is able to kill the three Chinese officers sitting around the table but somehow miss their girlfriends with one long burst, something I don't even think the Delta Force would be capable of.All told not a great film but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

You ought to see the closing of this movie, if nothing else. American brass are trying to destroy an American soldier and are apologizing to Chinese officials whose warlords were butchering Americans. All this is happening as the soldier presents the dog tags and other possessions of those butchered soldiers... The brass then take to trying to get this guy to be called insane and thrown out of the army.The Chinese official, on the other hand, humiliates the American brass to their faces... The extent to which this man holds America in contempt and has no fear of the army is astounding. It unbalances the whole film - formerly about an American-Japanese struggle and however adds the only interesting part of the plot.The plot is unfortunately quite unstructured, but you do get to see what discretion and executive force are when necessity prompts them and how they are superior to abstract rules. Obviously this stands to cause a conflict, but that is portrayed miserably, as I have already noted.Eventually, it works out, and the American general is somewhat impolite to the Chinese. He also tips his hat to the soldier - and while it is interesting to see a man known for insubordination admit the importance of rules and hierarchy before he accepts that discretion is sometimes necessary, it is disheartening to see the whole charade unfold... Such cowardice paraded as prudence & diplomacy you've rarely seen.It boggles the mind, but let's hope it won't become a common occurrence in the near future.

Frank Sinatra looks like an outdoors department store mannequin most of the time and the usually reliable action director John Sturgis (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape) is at a loss to get things moving in this World War Two drama that claims to have been shot in Burma and Thailand (exposition shots perhaps) but is dominated by exterior scenes shot on indoor stages.Sinatra is Captain Tom Reynolds commander of an elite force sent to Burma to train and support locals against the Japanese. He's there to get a job done by any means possible and his methods causes rifts within the unit as he bends the rules. In between helping liberate the Burmese people and committing atrocities he spends his r&r in clinches with English challenged, futuristic looking Gina Lollibridgida.Sturgis is hard pressed from the outset to build suspense and urgency into his film with Sinatra's casual acting style in the pivotal role. He's all Vegas cool and insolence and it's a bad fit to lead the likes of characters played by real rough and tumbles Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson who shine amid a lack lustre cast. It's a passionless performance (even in his clinches with Gina) as he downs a fair amount of scotch and sleepwalks through his role.Sturgis for his part has a hard time trimming and putting scenes together to give the film any life or power. The dialog is cliché ridden and the acting flat most of the time which Sturgis attempts to remedy by punctuating with action and sneak attacks that are themselves poorly staged and edited.Legendary B&W cinematographer William Daniels never did grasp color in the same way and he glaringly displays it here with distracting compositions that look artificial and lit like football stadiums. Hugo Friedhofer's score attempts to convey the gravity of the situation but instead heightens the overall mawkishness.In similar more successful treatments you have Errol Flynn's inspirational leadership in Warner's suspenseful Objective Burma before and Lee Marvin's tough, no nonsense commander in The Dirty Dozen following raising the question is Never So Few worth a watch? The first word of the title says it all.