36 Hours (1965)

One thing about World War II (1939-1945) movies is that we can’t get enough of them; I tried to count the number of movies Hollywood has made on the subject and failed miserably. Being so much obsessed with one event in history gives a rare glimpse of American psyche, they love being a winner and they were clear winners of the greatest battle ever fought in the history of mankind, hence the obsession. However one must give credit to them for coming up with diverse topics every time with the backdrop of war.

Now before we discuss this particular movie in question a little background would be helpful. The turning point of World War – II is considered to be the success of Normandy attack on 6 June 1944 by Allied forces on the beaches of France (Than controlled by Germany). Germany knew there was going to be a full blown attack on them, however where and when? Nobody knew, the allied forces were preparing for this battle since 1943 and made every effort to confuse the enemy by providing false information to the enemy about their plan which was codenamed Operation Bodyguard.

The movie is about Jeff Pike (James Garner) a U.S. Army Major; he is sent to Lisbon to meet a source, but instead is sedated and abducted by Germans on 2 June 1944, as Pike has attended the last briefing on the impeding attacks he knows everything about the allied plans and strategy. German army knows that it will take a lot of time to get information from him by the method of torture, so they plan an elaborate scheme to get the information. They send him to a dummy hospital in Germany, where when he wakes up everybody tries to convince him that six years have passed since he went to Lisbon, and Allied forces have won the war, do they succeed in convincing Pike and are able to get the desired information forms the crux of story.

To tell you the truth sometimes excellent premises like this are screwed up big time with uninteresting screenplay and lame storytelling, which to my relief is not the story here (pun intended). If Germany would have got conclusive evidence in advance that Allied forces were going to attack Normandy it would have deployed most of its forces to those French beaches and the result of World War – II would have been much different from what we know about it now. An excellent book on similar setting, ‘Eye of the needle’ by Ken Follett would make an entertaining read as well, however Yash Raj Movies took out all the interesting parts of the book, retained the love story and made a horrible adoption called ‘Fanna’.

The beauty of the movie not only comes from the excellent premise but the way the story progresses, not only the detailing used to fool pike is interesting, so is the countersues taken by Major Pike to mitigate the damage, add to it the way a junior officer wants to remain the good books of his senior officer, personal gains over the overall well-being of the country, and voila you have a classic.

Please watch this movie if you have even a slight interest in War/Spy/Thriller movie genre, you won’t be disappointed.

Rating ****.