Von Ryan's Express (1965)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This one is no exception, Why anyone thinks that this guy can act is beyond me. The movie was silly and Frank being the leader is even sillier. This movie would have been done better even if Bing Crosby was the lead. I've seen him in many different movies, From Here to Eternity, Out on the Town, Robin and the Seven Hoods, and no matter what I see him in, it's the same untalented Frank. His voice may have been a hit for some but his acting is non plus at the best.

It is hard for me to believe that this film is now 51 years old. It seems like only yesterday that i stumbled on this gem in my first flush of cinema going youth. Based on a popular book of the era, this is world war 2 as adventure, and not in any way a recreation of events. Do not confuse this action escape yarn with the John Frankenheimer/Burt Lancaster drama The Train, that excellent movie is a very different animal. In Mark Rodson's Von Ryan's Express the emphasis is on entertaining high adventure and in its day this was an exciting escape thriller. Sinatra in his most successful box office role plays a brash self motivated American officer who leads a mostly British train load of prisoners of war to safety via the Swiss alps from internment in occupied Italy aided by many good none Nazi Italian's. The friction between the stiff regimented Brit's and the free loading American improvisation has been done so many times it has long been a creche but here it is very entertainingly achieved.I do hope i will not spoil the film for a first time viewer but the ending differs from the book with a so dull but very period down beat ending. As a foot note back in 1965 pop music and the charts was my generations "Cell Phone/Computer Game" where we were at, happening! Only slowly therefore did i discover Sinatra was a singer first and an actor second, but to this very day, i consider Sinatra a true movie star. Please give "Von Ryan's Express" a watch and i'm sure you will enjoy this cinematic moment in time.

I've seen Von Ryan's Express ten times and it's one of those war films that are ideal for passing a couple of hours on a wet afternoon. Basically the film is set in Italy in 1943 and is the story of a group of POWs who are abandoned by the Italians as the Allies advance, then are captured by the Nazis and placed on a prison train where they kill their captors and force the driver to drive them through Italy to Switzerland and freedom.Frank Sinatra, as good an actor as a singer, plays Colonel Joseph Ryan, an arrogant pilot who antagonises the mostly British POWs and is nicknamed Von Ryan for his high handed and arrogant attitude. However, the British POWs, led by Trevor Howard, come to respect him as the film goes on and help him achieve his plan to escape to Switzerland.Von Ryan's Express is a good film as the action never lets up and the final scenes where the POWs cut the railway line behind them to stop a German train capturing them and then have a gun battle, where Ryan is gunned down, are first rate. Also the way the Gestapo are outwitted is clever, with the POWs dressed in stolen German uniforms, and there is a twist when the POWs find a woman, apparently a prostitute, on the train and then Ryan has to shoot her when she tries to escape and betray them to the Italian police.A good film that was very popular when released and one of the best war films of the sixties.

All aboard the Freedom Train! Von Ryan's Express is an enjoyable, somewhat more than a waste of time prisoner escape movie. While Sinatra's acting was decent, I found his character to be not very believable -- but he did well with what he had in the script. Many of the characters were somewhat stereotypical but not too over the top in that regard, and the supporting cast was competent and entertaining. The story is of course not very credible, although it could have been more plausible had they been trying to fool civilian authorities in peace time rather than Nazi military and Gestapo officials during World War 2, as in the movie.The movie's strengths include the epic cinematography of a locomotive charging through a variety of genuine Italian scenery (an Italian railroad company was given thanks at the end, but their reward really was the free advertising for tourism and rail travel in that beautiful country), occasional bits of comic relief that worked (such the chutzpah of Sinatra stubbornly negotiating the sale of his shiny American watch with a Gestapo agent, a fact that should have given things away in the real world), and some picturesque air to ground combat scenes.