Dam It
D-day is coming and there are a few things which need doing before it can go ahead, one of which is to blow a hole in the base of a dam so a valley will flood and block of a crucial transport route for the Germans. It is a plan which Churchill himself has devised and part of it is in place as German Lt. Hans Müller (Richard Harrison) has been killed by French resistance fighter Elise (Pilar Velázquez) and his British identical twin brother Lt. Richard Benson (Richard Harrison), divided by their parents an English father and a German mother, has taken his place. But as the British army parachute in to complete the next stage of the mission Captain Holtz (Klaus Kinski) begins to grow suspicious of Müller.
What do you do when you have run out of ideas but need to make a movie; well you throw in a twist which is ridiculous. What I am no about is "Commando Attack", aka "Churchill's Leopards", which gives us a straight forwards war movie with a team sent in to blow up a dam but then tries to freshen it up with the additional element of a twin taking his brother's place. As someone who watches a lot of bad movies this instantly made me think of a Jean Claude Van Damme movie because he has been known to play twins and I bet he would be cast if they decided to remake "Commando Attack" now.
The thing is that once you get past the far fetched set up of Benson and Müller being twins on opposite sides during the war there is little else to make "Commando Attack" that entertaining. We have all the typical stuff of soldiers sneaking around, a female resistance fighter to bring a bit of romance and of course things not going to plan when the Nazis become aware that there is something going on.
What this all boils down to is that "Commando Attack" would have just been a middle of the road war time action and adventure movie but in the end the addition of the twins element weakens it and makes it all a bit ridiculous. Throw in some poor dubbing, generic characters and unimaginative camera work and "Commando Attack" becomes a movie purely for those looking to watch every war movie ever made rather than those seeking entertainment.
