Shock Troops
Shock Troops
| 05 April 1967 (USA)
Shock Troops Trailers

A French resistance group frees twelve captured soldiers from a German prison camp, but apparently there is an additional prisoner among them who is suspected of being an enemy spy.

Reviews
jamesAQ

The writer of the IMDb intro obviously did not watch the movie, as the enigmatic "homme de trop" played wonderfully by Michel Piccoli is not an enemy agent. And why is it labelled here as "shock troops" - an irrelevant title? This marvellous action movie has recently (march 2017) been screened in a restored version on French-German TV channel ARTE. Costa Gavras knows how to buld excitement and the editing is slick. A lot of resources must have gone into the movie which was an Italian-French co-production. The concluding battle with German forces features tanks, aircraft and hundreds of infantry - all very impressive. The closing shot was filmed at the impressive Viaduc de Garabit in the south of France which has been used in several other movies.

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eldoradofilm2

Being a Costa-Gavras fan this was the last film of him I never saw before. I only had my set of 24 lobby cards that really made me want to see it for almost 30 years. Exceptional cast, wonderful film. The camera work is outstanding and the "Gavras touch" is all over the film, he followed it with Z, L'AVEU and STATE OF SIEGE - all classics. UN HOMME DE TROP looks like a practice ground for those highly political films, and a very good one indeed.

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roland-scialom

During the Second World War, somewhere in France, a group of fighters of the Résistance attacks a German police station to release some of its members imprisoned there. The released guys are taken, in a big hurry, to the camp of the people of the Résistance. Once in the camp, the résistants discover that among their companions who were released, there is a guy who was also detained by the Germans and who doesn't belong to their group. Inicially, they think that this guy is a spy, and in this case they should kill him to protect their group. But this guy tells to them that he was detained because of his smuggling activities and that he doesn't support in any way the Germans. He fails to convince them, they decide to kill him and appoint one of them to do the job. When this résistant takes the guy in the forest to shoot him, the guy succeeds to convince the resistant to let him free. After walking for a while in the woods, the guy discovers that the Germans have surrounded the place and are about to catch the résistants. Instead of getting away, the guy walks back to the camp of the résistants to tell them that they are being attacked by the Germans. Eventually, after some fighting, most of the resistants are killed and a handful of them caught alive. The last scene is on an iron bridge across a mountain gorge. The Germans line up the resistants and go killing them one after the other. The guy who is a the end of the line takes advantage of the distraction of the Germans, to escape, climbing down the iron structure of the bridge. The title of the film says all about this story: "Un De Trop", which means that there is no place in a conflict, for one person who doesn't belong to one of the parts of this conflict, or in other words for an outsider. It is a great and instructive story. I saw it more than thirty five years ago, but I remember very well of it. It is a pity that it has not been widely publicized.

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yusuanlin

I, too, had a chance to watch this film for only once, and could never forget it, been even searching for a VHS copy but with no luck, agree with the other 2 reviewers' take on this matter, too many bad movies being released on DVD and Blu-Ray, but nobody want to pay attention on this one. Criterion Collection will release 2 great movies made by Costa-Gavras in May 2015, The Confession and State Of Siege , unfortunately "Un Homme De Trop" is not included, I really hope this film is not lost!! I had sent a request to Criterion Collection to make this film available, hope they will acknowledge it. If it's still being shown on TV, meaning at least there is 4x3 aspect ratio version of it, but no..I'd like to see it with original 2.35:1 ratio on Blu-Ray, please!!"Un Homme De Trop" was shown in 2013 Champs-Elysees Film Festival stated as: "La projection du film très rare Un homme de trop de Costa-Gavras"The projection of the very rare film of Costa-Gavras!!! JUST IN It's coming out as part of Costa-Gavras Film Collection Vol.1 in Nov.

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