This is a war drama, not a melodrama. It is a who's who of postwar British actors; all in good form. I suspect, given what's happened to Anglo-American classrooms, that the sacrifice and loss portrayed in this film are being swept into history, but not history books. The late Roger Ebert's review is fairly typical of post-modern criticism. I was surprised by its dismissal of every element of the movie. Unfortunate, and not historical.
