Fresh from destroying the guns of Navarone, Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Miller (Edward Fox) are brought back for another mission:
Uncover a traitor who is working amongst the partisans of Yugoslavia.
Airdropped into enemy territory, the pair find themselves tasked with a new impossible mission:
Destroy a massive bridge before the German army can cross and wipe out the partisans.
I read Force 10 from Navarone in a compilation with the original book years ago. I remember enjoying it, but it is bizarre:
The book starts right after Guns ends, but it follows the continuity of the film. If I had not already watched the film I would have probably been more confused, but it was still jarring to go from the all-man squad of MacLean’s first book to Force 10, where Andrea is getting married to his cinematic love interest Maria.
I have not read it in decades, but I can remember the rough outline.
Ironically, despite the fact that Force 10 was written as material for the screen, the final film bears little resemblance to the novel.
The film took almost 20 years to be made, which meant the cast were too old to reprise their roles.
Nowadays, filmmakers sweat about continuity in a way that filmmakers of earlier eras were less concerned with.
The makers of Force 10 split the difference, providing just enough context to set up our heroes before sending them off on their mission:
Using footage from the climax of Guns of Navarone that excludes any of the stars, the filmmakers hold off until after the guns have been destroyed, to introduce our new Mallory and Miller exhausted but elated on the deck of the ship.
In contrast to their previous versions, Mallory and Miller are now played as jovial oldtimers and best friends, with an implied history of multiple missions together. Shockingly, Andrea has completely disappeared and is never referenced.
In a more minor bit of continuity revision, Mallory is no longer able to speak German.
The cast is a who’s who of names: Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, Harrison Ford, Carl Weathers and Franco Nero. Richard Kiel, famous for playing henchman Jaws from James Bond, plays a sadistic traitor. In a bit of trivia only Bond fanatics will appreciate, he is dubbed by another Bond veteran, voice actor Robert Rietty. Former Bond girl Barbara Bach also appears as a partisan, although her role is brief.
Indiana Jones fans will also spot Michael Hurd, who plays a Nazi over a decade before he faced off against Harrison Ford as the sadistic Vogel in Last Crusade.
Despite this cast, the film lacks the focus and tension of its predecessor, and it has a couple of extra characters who feel a shade underwritten. Ford is wasted as the stiff American commando, and Robert Shaw comes off unnaturally chipper as Mallory.
While the film is awkwardly paced, the finale is decent, featuring an exploding dam and a collapsing bridge.
Directed by Bond veteran Guy Hamilton, Force 10 from Navarone is a little too sleepy to work as an action adventure, but it makes for an easy TV watch.
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