Whilst the film starts off quite well, the scenery is impressive, and Jimbo and the cast (sort of) hold their own initially , the whole film gradually and almost completely sinks into Rambo territory. Stereotypical characterisation doesn't quite cover it! The German commander is nasty, the Italian is a turncoat who doesn't want to fight, the captured pilot is surprise surprise...a fanatical Nazi and racist with an iron cross. The Italian is a turncoat, the Frenchman just wants to sacrifice his own life. A few soldiers would seem to be holding off a whole battalion who simply charge directly at them and get slaughtered - they are supposed to be elite Afrika Korps for ****'* sake! The doctor suddenly becomes an expert with a machine gun, and the stock characters do exactly what's expected of them, with the comic self-sacrificing black guy, arm aloft, holding up a captured medal as he dies - LOL. I won't even mention the laughable scene where the whole German battalion are "moaning".

I am ashamed to say as an ardent film fan I have not seen the original starring Humphrey Bogart. I do however have the luxury of being able to judge this film with an unbiased view. I didn't even realise it was a TV film until I saw the details on the IMDb site. Belushi gives a creditable performance but I think all the characters gel together well and the film carries a certain aura of the old British 40's and 50's war films such as Ice cold in Alex though obviously not in the same league. The characters are doomed and yet you feel for them. At the end as the camera pans across the line of makeshift rifle tombstones and Belushi recites the fourth paragraph of Laurence Binyon's 'The Fallen' you realise that you are not only at the end of a quite good film but also you owe a great debt to the fallen heroes of yesteryear.

This was a pretty entertaining view in my opinion. I guess this was a remake and I never have seen the orig, so I will only comment on the version on saw. The movie was well done and it had a lot of action. Its your basic Mexican stand off between the Allies and the Germans. The Americans are held up within these ruins in the desert and have to make a live or die last stand. BlaH blah nothing new. What I enjoyed the most had been that all the the Allie countries fighting the war had a single representative in the bunker. Each with their countries own fighting weapon. I gotta a kick outta that part. The movie is just something to look at if you bored and you wont be disappointed if you come across it on HBO one night or find it in a DVD bargain bin.piEce

the tank was an m-3 grant. it was a basic m-e lee with the top cupola taken off. the British did not like the height of the lee so they removed the cupola and renamed it the grant. same tank, 75mm in hull, 37 mm in turret, but no .50 cal in the top. it was used in most of the desert battles of world war II then was replaced after the German defeat in north Africa. it saw limited action in some of the other British areas of the war, but not to the extent that it did in north Africa. the tank in the original movie was an m-3 lee, cause there was surplus of them at the time in 1944. this must have come from a museum somewhere in Britain. Jeff