Set during 1942-43 during the prime years of World War II, Battle Force tells many separate tales, but the main two concern Maj. Mannfred Roland (Keach), a Nazi who has fallen in love with a Jewish actress, Annelise Ackermann (Eggar). The fate of their relationship is in limbo as Roland fights in North Africa and can't be at home in Germany to protect her from the evil Nazis (by comparison, he's a "good" Nazi). The other story tells the tale of Gen. Foster of the U.S. Army (Fonda). His son John (Lovelock) is something of a screw-up who can't please his demanding father. So he follows in his footsteps and enlists in the Army. The whole film is narrated by Orson Welles and features a lot of stock footage of the war. Will this truly be "The Biggest Battle" of them all? When we originally came across the Continental big-box VHS of this movie, how could we resist it: it's called Battle Force, and the tagline screams "THE MOST AWESOME BATTLE EVER SEEN!" Plus look at the cast. It's insane. And we didn't even have room to mention Orson Welles as the Narrator . How could it lose, right? Well...it's not that this movie is bad, really, but it's extremely stodgy and old-fashioned. It seems like the type of Sunday afternoon programmer your grandparents might watch to while away a rainy day. Yes, there is some war action, including some shooting and explosions (giving credit where credit is due, they're some quality blow-ups), but somehow it's not really enough. There are way too many cooks in this broth. There's a ridiculous amount of characters, plus the stock footage and narration, and the result is pretty much a jumble. Which, unfortunately, is not terribly engaging to the audience.We generally love Umberto Lenzi. We think he's great, but his war movie output (that we've seen, anyway) doesn't seem to rival his poliziotteschi work like Violent Protection (1976) or his classic exploitation horror stuff like Cannibal Ferox (1981), Eaten Alive (1980) or Nightmare City (1980) - not to mention his excellent giallo period of the 1970's. I wonder what Henry Fonda would think if he knew he was working under the demented genius who created the above titles? Regardless, a direct parallel can be made here: just as the equally-staid WWII drama The Second Victory (1987) is put out by AIP, who is normally known for much wilder and more entertaining fare, so is the case here with the rest of Umberto Lenzi's work. Why both AIP and Lenzi decided to "go boring" for their WWII jaunts is an interesting coincidence indeed.The movie is well-directed by Lenzi, and it is ambitious and expansive, but there's no humor whatsoever, and it all comes off as flat and uninvolving. It's all well and good to play "spot the star" but that's not really a coherent way to make a movie. Perhaps sensing this, we must quote the writer of the back of the VHS box. At the very end of a multi-paragraph description, the final pitch to rent or buy this movie to a potential buyer or renter is this: "Fans of tank warfare will appreciate the large numbers of tanks and other armored vehicles employed in the well-choreographed battle sequences. The military hardware in the film is quite elaborate, including a "Big Bertha" railroad gun." And that's it. That's the capper. It seems this movie would be the perfect Christmas gift to that member of your family who inevitably is a "fan of tank warfare". And just the words "Big Bertha" are enough to pique our interest.In the end, it seems only die-hard fans of any of the personalities involved with this project would get much out of Battle Force.For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

Il grande attacco, also known in various versions under the English titles Battle Force and The Greatest Battle, is by consensus a muddled WW2 Action picture with some good battle scenes and a confused plot. It maybe that the film is a lazy effort on the part of its writers but it also, in its incoherence, manages to say something about war and history which is inexpressible through a more formally consistent narrative.A disparate group of people – an American general (Henry Fonda), an Irish-American war correspondent (John Huston), a German officer (Stacey Keach) and a famous German-Jewish actress (Samantha Eggar) meet in Berlin on the day that Jessie Owens wins an Olympic gold medal and the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler, refuses to shake the athlete's hand. The characters gossip casually about this and go their separate ways, with Fonda and Keach swapping souvenir Olympic medallions as a measure of their friendship. Six years later, these and a number of other characters are enmeshed in the second world war, the film consisting of various seemingly random sequences involving the characters in some kind of dramatic situation or undertaking a battle mission. Some of them are killed and some are still alive in 1943, where the film arbitrarily ends. But a coincidence means that the now dead Keach's medallion is in the hands of Fonda's American hero son (Ray Lovelock, of Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue 'fame').Taking the film at face value and allowing it not to conform to classical narrative structures, it seems that the arbitrary and the coincidental are the rules of the game here. There is no narrative arc or learning curve to most of the characters' lives; they are driven to undertake their roles in the war, through either loyalty to their homeland or to their professions, without even really coming to a consciousness of their situation. This is most striking in Keach's story: he marries Eggar and fights and dies, heroically, for the German side in Africa; at home, his wife is sexually harassed and persecuted by the Gestapo until she commits suicide. Keach dies without knowing that the ideology he has been fighting for has killed the woman he loves.Another sub-plot features Edwige Fenech as a French woman driven to prostituting herself to German officers by poverty. She isn't a bad person, she's eaten with self-loathing through her circumstance and is genuinely shocked when the Germans execute a Resistance fighter who has tried to hide in her apartment. Nevertheless, she herself is shot dead by the Resistance who are under the misguided impression that she was behind their compatriot's death. Her murder is quick and brutally achieved and her death doesn't teaches anyone anything. Life in war, for her and for most of the characters, is meaningless, degrading, dangerous and comes to a sudden end, as if life were a drive which simply stops when it meets an opposing, amoral force. Earlier in the film, Fenech has been helped by German officer Helmut Berger, here playing a character somewhat similar to Brando's in The Young Lions. Berger is fiercely loyal to Germany but doesn't seem ideologically Nazi nor does he seem to have lost his humanity – he looks seriously disturbed as he sees the death around him. Yet like Keach he never learns anything but how to die, which he (like an American soldier he'd previously shot) begs for. That Fonda's son doesn't kill Berger at the latter's request means nothing, as Berger croaks whilst drinking the water that Lovelock tries to force down his throat.There is a brief respite from the film's grimness at the end, as Fonda learns that Lovelock has survived thus far and been commended. Yet this is a bitter sweet given that this takes place after Fonda's visit to his other son's grave, who has been killed a few months before. More telling is the moment where Huston and a young cameraman are killed filming a battle – the camera is shown strewn in the sand, as if in a reflexive moment Il grande attacco realises and admits that the process of filming battles is futile.There's no point in arguing that this is a great film. There is something rather distasteful about its predominant concentration on the lives of the officer classes (Fenech's character is the only exception) and it may be that Il grande attacco really is not worthy of serious consideration. Yet its inconsistency and randomness adds up to a curiously consistent vision of war as a meaningless serious of events for those unlucky enough to be caught up in its history and unconscious enough not to comprehend their predicament. Director and co-writer Umberto Lenzi was, during the same period as this film was produced, producing some of the sleaziest and sickest of the giallo, crime and even cannibal films of the age; perhaps this is better understood as part of that movement in Italian cinema that produced films which deliberately undercut the meaning-making inherent in the Hollywood model, producing a provoking vision of a universe of cruelty, absurdity and violent death which shows that the world is more made up of swirling, futile vortices than character-building, consequential journeys.

This spectacular movie starts in Berlin during Oympic Games 1936 with the African-American Jesse Owens as champion . There reunites a Nazi officer (Stacy Keach) , a veteran American journalist (John Huston), a famous actress (Samantha Eggar) and an US General (Henry Fonda). Keach gives gifts to the hosts captioning : 'In God we trust' . The group of different nationalities vows to meet five years later but WWII interrupts their lives . Los Angeles 1942 , the upright General incarnated by Henry Fonda is assigned to West Point Academy and his son (Ray Lovelock) takes the ranks to North African campaign . After the action is placed on several locations , as London , West Point, Le Hauvre (France) . Island of Creta , October 1942, an official (Giuliano Gemma) whose mission is to destroy a German installation before being used against the Allied forces . Following the feats about Partisans and a parachuted squadron (led by Giacomo Rossi Stuart) attacking a train (commanded by Helmut Berger) transporting a big German-built cannon (whose scenes are taken from ¨Battle of commands¨). Meanwhile the German actress (Samantha Eggar)for the reason his Jewish origin is detained by SS and Nazi official Berger is enamored to prostitute (gorgeous Edwige Fenech) . Posteriorly , it tells battles in Mareth line March 14, 1943 and Gabes , North Africa , engaging war German Army against British VIII army . There a captain (Gemma) neutralizes a bomb camp and Nazi officer (Berger) impersonates Allied soldier to destroy supplies . Taking place spectacular battles with miniaturized tanks (whose footage is taken from ¨Battle of Alaimen¨ by Giorgo Ferroni and the same producer Mino Loy) .This is a regularly conceived WWII with action filled , studio character , drama and exciting battles , but nothing special . Packs inaccurate details and an extremely talented though wasted cast make this one of all-time great Italian epic productions though failed . The film contains news-reel documentary , stock-shots vignettes and miniatures , however lost continuity with several cuts and zooms . The battle scenes were shot in desert of Tabernas (Almeria) where in the 60s and 70s were filmed lots of Westerns . Furthermome, a prestigious cast , as Fonda , Eggar , Keach and appears as narrator the great Orson Welles . Numerous Italian secondaries as Jack Stuart , Andrea Bosic , Venantino Venanti , Ken Wood , Ida Valli and Rick Battaglia habitual of Peplum and Spaghetti . The tale was middlingly directed by Umberto Lenzi , he often used the pseudonym Hank Milestone and Humphrey Logan . He's an expert on wartime genre such as he proved in ¨ Desert commandos¨ , ¨Battle of commandos¨, ¨From hell to victory¨, and ¨Bridge to hell¨.

Director Umberto Lenzi's movies have always been the subject of criticism on web boards and even from nationally known reviewers, including Leonard Maltin. It seems as though he takes a lot of flak simply because his films are made overseas. At its heart, "The Greatest Battle" is really no better or worse than the slew of epic war films to come out of Hollywood in the 1970s. During the Berlin Olympics of 1936, German Major Roland (Stacy Keach); American General Foster (Henry Fonda); reporter Sean O'Hara (John Huston) and Jewish actress Annelise Ackerman (Samantha Eggar) meet and become friends. Flash forward to late 1941: America is embroiled in World War II. Several more characters are introduced, namely: Foster's loser son, John (Ray Lovelock); gutsy British commando leader Captain Scott (Giuliano Gemma) and dedicated Nazi commando officer Lt. Zimmer (Helmut Berger). All of these characters become interconnected over the course of the next two years and wind up coming face-to-face at the Battle of the Mareth Line in North Africa. Each turn in a dedicated, honest performance – something to be admired in this genre. Several familiar European actors appear in the supporting cast, and although their parts are unimportant to the storyline, it's essential to mention some of them: Giacomo Rossi-Stuart ("Hornets' Nest") plays John Foster's commander; Andrea Bosic ("Hell's Brigade") as the leader of Greek partisans; Ida Galli ("Eagles Over London") as Scott's estranged wife, and Venantino Venantini ("The War Devils") as her new husband; Geoffrey Copleston ("The Assisi Underground") as a menacing SS Colonel; Luciano Catenacci ("The Battle of El Alamein") as a British radio operator; the list goes on forever. Even Orson Welles ("The Battle of Neretva") narrates the proceedings rather unnecessarily – and, often, incorrectly. For the most part, this is a plot less series of scenes, chronicling major events in the characters' lives and campaigns. Lenzi fills out the running time with stylistic action sequences and well-integrated stock footage. Lenzi's directorial style and energy are apparent in a number of battle scenes. He takes a lot of ideas and scenarios from his earlier war films – notably, "Battle of the Commandos" (a partisan ambush of a German armored convoy looks awfully familiar, as does a commando raid on a coastal bunker) and shoots them with a bigger budget and more professionalism. The Federico Zanni photography is simply dazzling and excellently edited by Eugenio Alabiso, one of my favorite genre-editors. Unfortunately, a lot of familiar stock footage from "Battle of the Commandos", "Commandos", "Desert Assault" and "The Battle of El Alamein" is used as a substitute for original action footage, which really hampers the original, epic feel of the movie. But look at Hollywood's epic "Midway" released in 1976: it's a hodgepodge of stock footage and cameos, yet is much better received by audiences than this film. The major action sequences revolve solely around the stock footage, but that's okay in this movie, because the material surrounding these sequences is so good.The production values are amazingly high in this film, setting it another notch among its' peers. The sets, from Parisian bars and brothels, to huge entrenchments, fuel dumps and railroad stations look fantastic. The costumes and props are appropriate, too. There are hundreds of extras, tanks, APCs, jeeps and airplanes dotting the screen, giving the film the appropriate epic look. This Italian-produced war epic is typically underrated and undeserving of the criticism it so often receives. While it does lack a storyline and has no character development whatsoever… and contains reels of stock footage, the original material, style and slew of actors help to offset these flaws. "The Greatest Battle" is no better or worse than any similar film made in Hollywood, and is certainly much more entertaining and engaging than titles like "Midway".