For reasons of which I remain ignorant this was the only film directed by Carl Foreman who, along with Joe Losey, fetched up in England as a direct result of the Senator from Wisconsin. Both men had done sterling work pre-HUAC, Losey helming such films as The Dividing Line, The Boy With Green Hair, The Prowler, etc, and Foreman writing - or co-writing - such titles as Champion, Cyrano de Bergerac, Home Of The Brave, Young Man With A Horn, High Noon etc. Once in the UK Foreman wrote The Sleeping Tiger which Losey directed with both men working under assumed names. Foreman went on to write a group of well-received films, The Key, The Guns Of Navarone, The Bridge On The River Kwai, and wrote and directed The Victors with no real top-drawer stars but a fairly decent second eleven like Vince Edwards, George Hamilton, Eli Wallach and George Peppard who for once actually acts in the odd moment. A series of vignettes rather than a plot its message, don't, whatever you do, go to a war, is hackneyed but nevertheless worth repeating. Weighing in at two and a half hours it manages to hold the attention.
Review of The Victors
