In the not-so-great pantheon of improbable war movie scenarios up there with the ridiculous Bruce Willis vehicle Hart’s War and the bank-heist-meets-war fantasy of Kelly’s Heroes this badly conceived Paul Newman-led turkey that turns the nightmare of war into a farcical fantasy realm that bears little to no resemblance to reality. Mind you, this is the late 1960s, so far-fetched experiments and flouting convention was the norm, even for war movies. But from the get-go, it seems that the cast of Harry Frigg, including the usually exuberant Newman, are just sleepwalking through this one in a narcotic haze. The film is ostensibly about a gaggle of high-ranking American generals who somehow get captured by the famously apathetic Italian soldiers (the first improbability) and are kept under luxurious lock and key by the Italians in a cushy villa run by an amiable Colonel, who runs the camp like a posh hotel manager.
Newman’s private Frigg enters the picture via parachute, sent by his commanders because as a infamous discipline case he has a knack for breaking out of stockades. And it’s about this point in the film where credibility begins a nosedive: Frigg is appointed major general in order to outrank the imprisoned generals so there will be no squabbles about who’s in charge. Unfortunately, once Frigg has infiltrated the low-security villa, they all find out that Italy has surrendered, and the American prisoners will now have to face the unappealing prospect of being transferred into German custody. Then the pressure’s on Frigg to do some creative improvising if he still wants to stage his cockamamie prison break. Unfortunately the goofy humor here has more in common with tepid TV military comedies like Hogan’s Heroes and Gomer Pyle than with more astute big-screen antiwar farces like Oh! What a Lovely War. With its absurd premise and uninspired acting performances, nothing, not even its sophisticated new Blu-ray format, will likely rescue this unfortunate dud from a life sentence in the prison of comic mediocrity. Not Recommended.