Customer Rating: 
Summary: Deserves Its Own Body Bag
Comment: The hardest part of writing a review for this movie was selecting a myriad of titles that filled my imagination: "Fell on its Own Plunger," or "Navy Recruiting Film," or "Pull the Pin on this One and Release the Charging Handle, " or "Weapons Free at the Movie Marquee."
Although I have a great memory for the good things, I also have one for those which are bad, and this is bad. It's bad enough to make John Wayne's "The Green Berets" look like a Cannes Festival Film Classic, and this ranks as the worst military movie I have ever seen, being right down there with "The Blue Max."
It is 1942 and Colonel Darby played by James Garner is marked as a "comer" in the army. That was the term of the day for someone who was destined for the stars, at least on his epaulettes. Darby wants to form an elite commando unit modeled on the British of the same name, but he wants to give it a distinctly American title. He will call them rangers. This is where you should get up to get a two-hour snack or do your laundry leaving the flick on PLAY.
They train in Scotland being put up by the local population, and one, wee Scottish lassie falls in love with an Elvis Presley look-alike ranger candidate billeted with her and husband. As if the training isn't tough enough, he sneaks out at night to go back to the house for some wee Scottish hospitality and infidelity. She is ready to leave her man when she finds out her bonnie American lover was killed in a wee bit of training. The moral? Ranger training is dangerous, very dangerous.
The next scene is North Africa where they perform so well in combat, they are called "gangsters" by the Germans. "We're famous," chortles Darby. But he is unaware that the fate of his rangers, and the script for his audience is going to end up in the beaten zone of bad writing. I have to hand it to the acting of James Garner when one of his rangers confides in him, "Sir, war is a big stink." He keeps a straight face as Colonel Darby and reassures him in a paternal tone, "I know, son." (Blechhh)! This is where my half-masticated popcorn tossed out shrapnel-like kernels faster than the muzzle velocity of an M-1 rifle aimed right at the screen at the other kind of colonel. My reaction was like a dismal Delphic oracle of what was to come.
Following bad orders in real life, and in the film, Darby takes his battalion of rangers out into the Italian countryside where they are surrounded by German armor that wipes out his unit. (The Germans will parade 600 captured rangers through the streets of Rome). Darby is depressed as he heads toward the beach without a command. But faster than you can recite your third general order, a soldier notices the ranger patch on Darby's shoulder and says, "Wow! There's a ranger." Darby gets all perky like he has just downed a whole bottle of Shaklee vitamins with a full canteen of potable water.
Just when I was thinking of going into full retrograde (the formal military term for what civilians call retreat, or haul a** in the military vernacular), finally, the credits start to "go rolling along."
The film, mercifully, has come to an end.
This movie has more formula than a nipple of Enfamil. The script is so bad that I would have rather eaten fortified peanut butter from a box of C rations without water or crackers! I would rather have gone through the CS Chamber without a gas mask! Okay, you get the idea.
This movie is a big stink! It is the mother of bad film-making; it is the WMD of forgettable pictures.
Put this one in a body bag, and give it a proper burial.
