I'm a military history buff as well as a big fan of McGoohan (I'm a big Prisoner fan and most movies I see him in because of it), I'm also curious whenever I see Ed Bishop who I liked in UFO as CDR Styker, Captain Blue from Captain Scarlet, etc etc, and I have loved Cassavetes in the few films I've seen him in (The Killers, Dirty Dozen, Rosemary's Baby). So being how I'm in a foreign land with limited entertainment on the TV, I made sure to check out this flick on TCM UK. One things for sure it took guts for George Kennedy to play Patton after George C Scott did it, because NO ONE could hope to get close to that performance; as a result Kennedy doesn't really try hard (Luckily his role is somewhat minor). The beginning is good and than McGoohan comes in and it's pretty bad (sorry to say :-( ). His dialog is rather uncomphrensable in his bad American accent, so mercifully he gets killed pretty quick (totally saw most of the deaths here coming). So thats strike one, weak McGoohan performance. Strike two Cassavettes looks really really old in half of this film. He looks like a late age Jerry Orbach, so he really doesn't look like the commando OSS stuff that a Sterling Haydon (who actually was in his 20's) would have looked like. He also is just going through the motions here so he really brings the movie down as the lead. Sophia Loren who gets top billing has an unneeded minor role, she also looked better 20 years later in the grumpier old men movie (miracles of modern medicine), so she's no added attraction (although there are a couple of cuties in the film). Von Sydow is good (as usual), so I guess he kept it going for me. Also, I did manage to stay with it because I kept wanting to know how he was going to kill Patton with a rubber pellet in a movie car with the window up (all explained so those gaping holes got filled in). Vaugn and Hermann are also a funny footnote as two Gay Colonel's (Vaugn gets caught with the help even!). All in all, if your in the isolated middle east with lack of entertainment it's worth your 2 hours of time (but thats a big if!). 6 out of 10 for the nice tidy ending where most of the bad guys die.
Review of Brass Target
