Like the hard rock streets and cliffs on which the members of this company die, The Secret Invasion (1964) uses its motivations like chunks of granite – big, hard, unchanging, but unwieldy. This is a World War II movie using the same theme as The Dirty Dozen (1967), in which a team of criminals are assembled for a special mission. Led by Major Mace, their mission is to free a certain famous Italian general from the Nazis in Greece, on the assumption that he will then lead the Italian armies against their uneasy allies, the Germans. As this will happen during the Invasion of Italy, this will split the German defenses.
Why is the Major leading this insane mission? When he was a Colonel, he sent his own brother on a mission into the same citadel as the one the general is now held in. He failed to extricate the younger Mace in time, and the brother died. The Major was demoted. Now he’s hot for revenge.
And what of the men he leads? While they’ve been promised freedom, or at least life, each has their reasons, mostly selfish, although the explosives expert is an Irish Republican Army member who might be able to see more than his own self-centered needs. But the glamour boy? He’s also an impersonator who can’t resist a good role. Rocca, the planner? It’s a fascinating challenge. Durrell, the mystery man to be executed for murdering his own mistress? Well, that’s a harder guess.
And the guy who’s an expert forger? Well, he doesn’t want to be here, and his quick attempt to escape nearly leads to the instant failure of the mission – and the movie. From here on out, we should see these criminals working together and transforming from selfish individuals into a working team, and this transformation is unconvincing – or left on the cutting room floor. For example, the cold-blooded killer falls for a local young widow, still nursing a child. Why? We’re not sure. The attraction, which may be mutual, is obscure. When he accidentally kills the infant by smothering it while Germans are close by, he’s broken by it – and she forgives him. There may indeed be a bond there, but it’s a dark one indeed, and not particularly convincing.
The mission itself is at least worthy of those sent on it – so ridiculous and brazen as to gain the attention of over-confident individuals. Fortunately, the story is clever enough to not let the plan work. Instead, the group, captive and under harsh questioning, hangs together, improvises a new plan, and make do in an inspiring vision of never giving up.
Once out of the prison with their target, members starting falling in self-sacrificing ways which may have been necessary to the plot, but never feel quite right given their natures, but eventually Rocca and Durrell make it out with the General and take him to his men, located in one of those Balkan towns made of granite and hard men.
And, in a lovely twist, it turns out the “General” is a double for the real General; they speculate the General is dead and this substitute was used to control his men. He is informed that he will now order “his” men to turn on the Germans, but when he’s brought out to exhort his troops, he smiles broadly and says he will not; if they kill him, they, known as partisans, will be blamed and the troops will stick with the Germans.
But wait! There’s one more chunk of granite flying through the air.
During the breakout, several of the group had donned German uniforms, including Durrell, one of the two survivors; he has a Gestapo uniform. Stripping off the monk’s habit he was wearing as camouflage, he leaps onto the parapet, sneers at the faux-General, and shoots him in the head. He then executes a few Sieg Heils!, just to drive home the point, before the assembled and outraged Italians shoot him down, and then go on to fight the now-enemy Germans.
This is not a movie that lingers, you need to pay attention, but the failure to illustrate the hows and whys of the transformations of the former prisoners makes what could have been an exciting movie a bit of an enigma.
