WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

HotToastyRag For 1957, Bitter Victory is a pretty graphic war movie. It's filmed in black and white, but bloodstains and bullet holes are shown, deaths are prolonged, and the suspense of war is captured well.Curd Jurgens plays an officer in charge of a mission to German-controlled Benghazi during WWII. His second-in-command is Richard Burton, and since Burton is in love with Jurgens's wife, they don't have a very good working relationship. As interesting as this dynamic is, on and off the battlefield, the war scenes are where this movie really shines.This is not your typical WWII movie where one randomly fired gun makes the bad guy fall over, and the good guy comes home with a tiny scratch on his forehead as a battle scar. These men are out in the desert, delirious from heat and dying from dehydration, unfamiliar with the terrain, fighting men, scorpions, and the sun, and forced to face worse situations than they thought possible. I won't spoil anything, but there's a very intense scene in which one soldier is dying and another soldier has to decide whether to shoot him and put him out of his misery or let him die a slow, painful death. Those scenes weren't generally filmed in 1957! If you're used to lots of blood and torture in your war movies, you won't find this movie very exciting. But for a tasteful, classic war movie, it's very good. It's one of the best war movies I've seen. Plus, Richard Burton looks so incredibly handsome in his uniform. Ladies, you'll definitely want to check this one out.

mark.waltz The events surrounding a troop in North Africa dealing with a mission against Rommel are dramatized here with a return to what audiences had seen several years before with "The Desert Rats" and "The Desert Foxes". Richard Burton had been in one of those films and returned to familiar territory in this one, a World War II drama that unlike those two films is now pretty much forgotten. It's a story of a difficult mission, of human compassion and moral struggle, and a reminder that war in the silence of the unknown can be worse than a slow death. Burton leads this troop through various struggles, finding his own as he deals with the issue of life and death for suffering German prisoners. One man faces death by trying one attempt to bind the ties by showing Burton the picture of his German family, as if to say, "I'm human too." Burton, with that gorgeously eloquent voice, shows tenderness even as he kills, making the scene touching on many different levels.Burton has his back story explained as the one time lover of his commanding officer's wife, played by the sultry Ruth Roman. This creates a quiet animosity between Burton and c.o. Curd Jurhgens that heads to their mission overseas. Roman makes the most out of a small role, and Jergens adds layers of fear, desperation and turmoil of an often unsympathetic character. As directed by Nicholas Ray, this is so much more than a war mission film, with some surprising appearances in nice supporting roles by well known actors such as Christopher Lee and Nigel Green, showing the horrors and madness in war. A scene with a deadly scorpion (one of the tiny ones) will give you a start, so be warned.

Leofwine_draca BITTER VICTORY is a standard WW2 flick that seems to have heavily inspired the Italian run of WW2 movies that came out some ten years later. The bulk of the film is a men-on-a-mission thriller as a group of British soldiers steal some top secret documents from the Nazis and then are forced to flee for their lives into the desert. What follows will surprise nobody watching, as this is very straightforward stuff.What BITTER VICTORY does have going for it is a good cast, headlined by Curd Jurgens (surprisingly playing a Brit) and Richard Burton. The two have a love triangle going on involving Jurgens's wife, so there's a lot of antagonism and even hints at forthcoming murder that helps to drive the movie's conflict. The supporting cast is rounded out by the likes of Nigel Green, Christopher Lee, and Alfred Burke.This film is rather light on action, although the scenes set in Benghazi involving Green's safecracker are well handled. Overall the movie is well shot by American director Nicholas Ray (ON DANGEROUS GROUND), but it lacks quite a bit of suspense considering the premise so it's only middling stuff.

funkyfry I liked this one quite a bit. First of all Richard Burton was a great actor, and this is the best performance I've seen from him. You can feel his world weariness just dripping off him. Curd Jurgens is also really good in a very demanding role. Basically the whole movie is about their relationship, and they hate each other. There's no big resolution where they suddenly respect each other like you would get in a formula movie. A lot of the point is that Jurgens' character isn't respectable, and the main revelation is that he comes to feel the same way. But he's not villainous, it's easy to empathize with him even though he is sort of a cretin.The cinematography is really extraordinary, especially the scenes in the desert. It reminds me of Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" from a few years later. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an influence. The relationship is also slightly similar to the one between O'Toole and Shariff's characters in that film.The movie is deceptively course and 2 dimensional, like the combat dummies who are the first and last images we see in the film. Stick figures, pretending to be men, setting themselves up as targets. It doesn't ask us to feel sorry for the characters or to admire them, they aren't "larger than life" the way most characters are in war movies. I felt like the movie was saying that war is a natural state of mankind, not some kind of romantic adventure.