With some justice, this late-seventies film is little-remembered today. The best description might be 'unconvincing'. Christopher Plummer is an unconvincing director of a British operation which drops agents into WWII France; Harrison Ford is the slightly more convincing American bomber pilot; and Lesley-Anne Down is the middle-class hospital auxilary married to Plummer who meets Ford during a bombing raid on London. Her main function is to look decorative with those big blue eyes, and struggle, not too hard, to resist Ford's manly advances.
The locations are unconvincing – Christmas 1944 with trees in full leaf; daffodils out in 'France' in January; Lyon, one of France's largest cities, looking like a scruffy market town and so on.
The script is unconvincing – how can Plummer badly sprain his ankle through incompetence but be running at high speed from German soldiers with Ford 24 hours later? Why would the daring pair return to the farm they originally holed up in when they have been told by the plucky resistance daughter that her farmer father is a collaborator? How does the brave wife know where her husband's boss has his top-secret office? Why do no German guards notice that Ford has amazingly long hair when he insouciantly goes into the German HQ dressed as a German sargeant? Why is there no exploration of the tension and lack of fulfilment which is said to be at the heart of the married couple's problems? Too hard to do?
There are also plenty of cliches – German stereotypes, East End safecracker, adorable eight year old daughter. It is a pity that one of these cliches – the wise-cracking bomb-aimer who is part of Ford's crew - is the most convincing character in the film. ( )