| Force 10 from Navarone |  |
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The Frisco Kid |
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Hanover Street (1979)
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Ford must’ve had a good time with his first WWII period piece, because he stepped right back into the genre, playing David Halloran, an American bomber pilot who falls in love with a British nurse (Lesley-Anne Down). The rub comes when we discover that Margaret, the nurse in question, is already married to a fine, upstanding British agent named Paul (Christopher Plummer). And to keep on rubbing, the film goes on to create a scenario where David and Paul must team up to battle the Nazis. Although there are some great battle scenes and a pretty awesome motorcycle stunt, Peter Hyams’ attempt to recapture the feel of a war movie actually made during the war was, at best, only a partial success. It’s not just because of the romantic melodrama; it’s more because the rapid-fire, nobody-talks-like-that-in-real-life dialogue seems laughable unless it’s taken as the ‘40s-film homage it’s intended to be. The flirtatious patter between Ford and Down works well, but the pair get dragged down by the scenes where they have to deliver the inevitably heavy, “alas, we are but star-crossed lovers”-type dialogue. Still, poor Plummer fares worse, with both his lines and his delivery constantly placing him an inch away from shouting things like, “We must battle the Gerries at every turn, eh, old chap? Pip-pip and tally-ho!” Thankfully, things are more consistent for Ford during the scenes where he’s teamed with Richard Masur, who plays, Jerry, one of David’s fellow flyboys; their easy rapport makes for some of the most entertaining lines of the flick. (When Jerry asks how David can confirm that it’s only an optical illusion that makes the plane’s propellers look like they’re rotating in the wrong direction, David snaps, “When we take off heading for France, if we land in New York, they’re spinning backwards.”) “Hanover Street” doesn’t rank terribly high on most lists of the all-time best war films, but blame that on all of the romantic interludes -- during the sequences when it’s actually about the war, it’s consistently entertaining.
 Force 10 from Navarone |
 The Frisco Kid |