VON RYAN'S EXPRESS

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I had vague memories of this as a decent action film set in World War II, mainly set on the eponymous train, with Frank Sinatra as the lead actor.  Turns out I had completely forgotten that it starts off in an Italian POW camp, and that Trevor Howard is also a major character in it.

Not that the POW camp scenes amount to much, the main interest being the conflict between recently arrived US Colonel Ryan (Sinatra) on the one hand and Major Fincham (Howard) on the other.  

The Brits are in a bad way, because as punishment for constantly trying to escape they have been deprived of food and medicines.  Ryan, now the highest ranking officer at the camp, quite reasonably points out that since the Allies will soon reach them (we're in 1943) there's not much point in trying to escape.

Anyway this conflict soon gets overtaken by events as Italy surrenders and the camp guards skedaddle.  Unfortunately before the POW inmates can get far they are captured by the Germans and shoved onto a train taking them to The Fatherland.

This is the point at which the film proper gets started, and it's entertaining enough, as our guys manage to take over the train, and then overcome various obstacles in getting it to neutral Switzerland.

The final scenes in the foot of the Alps benefit greatly from some nice location cinematography and at one point some decent aerial shots of Messerschmitts.

On the down side the direction by Mark Robson never manages to inject much by way of excitement or suspense.   The relationship between Ryan and Fincham isn't developed, and indeed Trevor Howard's talents are rather wasted once we get on the train but hopefully he enjoyed being involved in some war heroics.

From a dramatic point of view the only scene of any note is one where Ryan is forced to shoot dead a fleeing Italian woman.  It carries some weight because it was established earlier that Ryan, unlike Fincham, has some scruples about killing in cold blood, or killing civilians.

It's a surprise that at the very end it is Ryan rather than Fincham who doesn’t survive.  Maybe Sinatra thought his character's death might help him get him an Oscar nomination, but if so he was wrong.

RATING: ✓ Cheers

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