You Can`t Win `Em All
Is a 1970 adventure movie set during the Greco - Turkish War 1920 - 22
Directed by Peter Collinson, starring Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson and French actress Michele Mercier.
The film starts just after the end of WW1, it is the end of the Ottoman Empire and two American mercenaries – Adam (Curtis) and Josh (Bronson) have journeyed to war torn Turkey to make their fortunes. Adam hopes to reclaim a ship seized by the Germans during WW1, now interned in the Turkish port of Smyma. Josh leads a band of heavily armed ex-soldiers who are simply interested in loot.
The two men and the mercenaries find themselves forced to work for an Ottoman Governor and tasked by him to help smuggle his daughters to safety out of the country via Adam`s ship – the Governor knows an American flagged vessel is not subject to the international blockade. However Adam and Josh soon realise that all is not quite what it seems and something else is going on. The Governor sends an experienced colonel and a troop of cavalry as additional escort to protect his daughters and their guardian Aila (played with style by Michele Mercier).
What follows is a wild ride of plot twists and attempted cons and deceptions with some great set-pieces – an armoured train (and attack on it); a set-piece attack by Greeks on a Turkish village; an air attack on a Greek camp (which uses the same replica aircraft used in the film Blue Max 1966) and finally the remaining mercenaries desperately fighting against overwhelming odds to get away on the ship as it is stormed be equally desperate Greeks and Ottoman Turks hoping to flee the country and the vengence of Ataturk and his followers!
The action scenes are fun, the three main actors have good chemistry together and the mix of weapons and uniform/outfits seem period (at least to me).
Finally our two heroes are captured and brought before “The General” (based Kemel Ataturk), played by British actor Patrick Magee (probably best known for his portrayal of Surgeon Reynolds in the movie Zulu 1964). The General is convinced by Aila (who it turns out was his spy all along) to let the Americans go – no harm, no foul.
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A fun hour and a half if you have time to kill, a boys own adventure story with some interesting ideas which could transfer to games on your tabletop if you fancy something a bit out of left field. Maybe another different use for those Early War Miniatures Circassians?
