In 1942 the German army in North Africa led by Field Marshall Rommel was kicking Allied booty, to say the least, and so the Western powers decided to try a sleight of hand approach to cutting Rommel’s attack capability by destroying his fuel depot. The storage tanks were deep in German territory, in the heavily defended Libyan port city of Tobruk, and so previous direct assaults failed.
Tobruck is the story of the mission that worked. A force that combined British ground troops with a special squad of German Jews who escaped Hitler, along with an American oil engineer with deep knowledge of the territory, were tasked with driving overland across the desert and bluffing through to the heavy guns defending the coast. The Jewish troops were all native German speakers, of course, and by wearing Nazi uniforms expected little interference.
If the mission went strictly as planned there’d hardly be material for a movie and there are several episodes that come up. Bunkering down for the first or second night in a wadi, they’re able to hide from an Italian patrol and then trick the Italians into thinking they’ve been attacked by a German squad coming from the other direction. And vice versa and so on.
Then the company takes possession of two German spies, an apparently English father and daughter, who think they’ve found safety as the Jewish troops play their parts as real German troops in their presence. Those heroes harbor a double agent, who sends the spies off to a hidden phone, though the ruse is uncovered and the pair found before any harm’s done to the mission.
Finally, after nearly an hour of screen time, the surviving troops reach Tobruk and make their way to the big guns. The mole has done the necessary, unfortunately, and the Germans inflict heavy casualties, averting the ground invasion planned to coincide with their effort. The Jews die valiantly and the American destroys the fuel dumps, and is the only one (along with his two Brit support troops) to get out alive.
Rock Hudson is the American, George Peppard, affecting a ridiculous accent, is the leader of the Jewish squad and the two key English soliders are played by stereotypical Brit actors, Nigel Green and Jack Watson. I don’t use the term derogatively but that if you thought of a WWII British colonel and sergeant major these two are exactly who you’d picture.
Arthur Hiller directed from Leo Gordon’s script (Gordon also plays Peppard’s sergeant) and mainly I’d say Tobruk is a serviceable war picture. Good, keeps the tension increasing, okay acting yet never gets all that exciting. As one of the IMDB commentors wrote, the movie seems to be stuck trying to create a parallel theme comparing the explicit antisemitism of the British officers with the Nazi’s extermination program.
recommended
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