In which Connery doesn't get to cop off with the customary harem of beach babes, doesn't get to save the world and more importantly gets his butt kicked by Ian Hendry! Sidney Lumet seasons Ray Rigby's claustrophobic screenplay with some stunning black and white cinematography (reminiscent of his earlier masterpiece '12 Angry Men') and then bakes it in about 6 million degrees of scorching desert sun. The story of five squaddies holed up in a military stockade at the tail end of WW11 is as preoccupied with examining political conflict within British society (through the interactions of the microcosmic cell mates) as it is with presenting a taut, compelling psychodrama. The allegorical tone of the movie is never clumsy or heavy handed though and Lumet keeps the narrative on the rails every step of the way. The dialogue crackles with blunt barrack room banter and black humour throughout perfectly offsetting the grim circumstances the prisoners find themselves in. Roy Kinnear, Ossie Davis and Ian Hendry (as a deranged martinet of a prison guard) all deserve special mention but the film surely belongs to Connery who stumbles 'bruised, battered and scarred but hard' through to the bitter climax with an extraordinary kind of dignity as he rails against the brutal injustices of 'the system'! It is a truly unmissable picture if only for Connerys' star turn but don't take my word for it. Check it out now.
