Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

Wuchak RELEASED IN 1975 and directed by Lewis Gilbert, "Operation: Daybreak" tells the true story of Britain sending a trio of Czech-born commandos (Timothy Bottoms, etc.) to Czechoslovakia in 1942 to assassinate SS-General Reinhard Heydrich (Anton Diffring), Hitler's buddy, infamously known as "the butcher of Prague." Unfortunately, the Czechs paid heavily with the SS eradication of the innocent village of Lidice, as well as (not shown) Lezhaky, the village where the parachutists dropped and received aid in the first act.The movie plays like a docudrama with a haunting synth-based score, which some love and some hate (regardless, there's some period music as well). The story is a mix of drama, suspense, thrills and tragedy. It's not a typical WW2 movie due to the covert mission. It's more akin to "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), "36 Hours" (1964), "The Eagle has Landed" (1977) and "Valkyrie" (2008), although of course the story is totally different.One element of the plot will tick you off, but it happens (I'm not going to give it away). Nicola Pagett is jaw-dropping beautiful. The authentic Czech Republic locations are a plus. This really happened; and the ending chronicles what happened to the Czechs.THE FILM RUNS 118 minutes and was shot in the Prague area. WRITERS: Ronald Harwood (screenplay) & Alan Burgess (novel).GRADE: B

rogerdarlington On 27 May 1942, at a tight street corner in Prague, two resistance parachutists - the Czech Jan Kubiš and the Slovak Jozef Gabčík stopped an open top car carrying the Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich with the intention of carrying out the most high profile assassination of the Second World War. The consequences - both personal and political - were enormous. Kubiš and Gabčík, together with five other parachutists, eventually found refuge in an orthodox church near the city centre, but they were betrayed by one of the other parachutists and all died in the shoot-out with the SS. My strong interest in the assassination is because it took place at the height of the wartime exploits of my Czech night fighter pilot father-in-law, so that I included a couple of paragraphs about it in my biography of him, and the church in which the assassins Kubiš and Gabčík died is literally at the end of the street in which my closest Czech friends live, so that I have visited it several times.The year after the assassination which made massive world news, Hollywood rushed out two films - "Hangmen Also Die" and "Hitler's Madman" - which gave highly fictionalised accounts of the event and its aftermath. In 1964, there was a Czech film called "Atentát". "Operation: Daybreak" - released in 1975 - therefore was the fourth project to bring this slice of history to the big screen. Although Czechoslovakia was still under communist control at the time, the largely British movie was shot on location in Prague with the support of Czech actors and technical crew. The main source material was "Seven Men At Daybreak", written by British author Alan Burgess and published in 1966, and the director is Lewis Gilbert who helmed three James Bond films around this time. Kubiš and Gabčík are played respectively by the American Timothy Bottoms and the British Anthony Andrews, while Heydrich - a major architect of the Final Solution - is portrayed by the German-born Anton Diffring whose father was in fact Jewish.Although much of the acting is merely average and most of the dialogue is somewhat stilted, unlike the earlier English-language films on this subject, "Operation: Daybreak" has an essentially accurate narrative, even if some characters are brought together and some events are invented for dramatic effect and, of course, much of the detail of the shoot-out in the church - which is especially well-done - must be speculative. I have seen the film three times now and still find it evocative and moving. The bravery of the parachutists and those who supported them, the brutality of the German reaction to the assassination, and the echoes of the events through post-war communist Czecholsvakia and the democratic Czech Republic underline the worthiness of this work.

glenn-aylett I haven't seen Operation Daybreak for many years and saw a recording last night as there was a blizzard outside and the television had gone off. Firstly, as this is based on a true story and doesn't deviate much from what really happened in Prague in 1942, Operation Daybreak is one of the best war films of all time, even if it has fallen off the radar since the seventies.Basically the plot is about a group of Czech resistance fighters(a very young Martin Shaw and Anthony Andrews play their roles excellently), who are parachuted into Czechoslovakia to assassinate the infamous, Reinhard Heydrich, second in command to Heinrich Himmler, the creator of the Holocaust and brutal governor of the country. As ever Anton Diffring is on top form doing what he does best, playing cold eyed Nazis( ironically in real life Diffring hated the Nazis and fled the country in 1939 as he was both gay and anti Nazi, something the real life Heydrich would have hated). Also Heydrich is portrayed as both a cold hearted killer and a devoted family man, again quite true to life.Yet apart from a top notch performance from Diffring, Martin Shaw and Anthony Andrews take excellent roles as the assassins, an original plan to open fire on Heydrich's special train goes wrong when another train passes, so they decide to gun him down in his open top Mercedes in Prague. True to real life events, Shaw's machine gun sticks and Heydrich is felled by a grenade thrown into the car, which leads to the evil Obergruppenfueher having to endure a slow, agonising death in hospital from internal injuries. However, in a twist to the story, with the Nazis carrying out massive reprisals for the death of Heydrich, Shaw decides to go to the Nazis and confess all, helped along by some torture, if the Gestapo leave his family alone. (In a cruel twist the Nazis torture and kill his entire family, which proves this was worthless, but Shaw continues his treachery by revealing where the resistance fighters are hiding).This is where Operation Daybreak turns into a battle worthy of better known epics, where the resistance fighters are hidden in the crypt of a church run by a sympathetic priest, played most ably by Cyril Shaps. Again largely true to events, the six resistance fighters manage to take out a large number of SS men, before the Nazis decide to flood the crypt and faced with either death by drowning, or terrible punishment by the Nazis, take their own lives.I would recommend Operation Daybreak to anyone who wants to watch a war film based on true events( the death of Heydrich has been covered before in Hangmen Also Die, but this has dated badly and was made on hearsay during the war) and also because the cast, which also includes Timothy Bottoms, Joss Ackland and Nicola Pagett, play such convincing and sympathetic roles. It's interesting as a sidenote that the scenes in Prague were actually filmed there, rather than a mock up, which is interesting as this was the height of the Cold War.

gbeausang A fantastic film. I first saw it about 15 years ago and remembered being extremely moved by it, then I recently bought it off the web and watched it again. It was every bit as stirring.The strengths of this movie lie in the beautiful simplicity of the performances. The characters exude courage and patriotism, set against the backdrop of the savage and brutal Nazi regime in Czechoslovakia during WWII. The score is also beautiful and touching in equal measure.What really hits home however, is when you realise that this is a true story. Everything dramatised in the film actually happened. The director (Lewis Gilbert) is intelligent enough to realise that only the lightest of touches are required, there are no grandiose set pieces - he lets the narrative and the characters' emotions speak for themselves. The ending is utterly heart-rending, but the film as a whole stands as the most inspiring tale of valour against hopeless odds. Watch it when you get the chance, you will never forget it.