Bob Winters

Great story, the "Black & White Film" adds to the tension. On par with Richard Burton in "The Spy Who Came In from The Cold". Widmark plays well as the small guy with brains who always is getting beatup by more and bigger men but outwits them. Can you tell that l liked it?

Just watched it on "Fire Stick". Wonderful! Thank God for the General who realized what the Wiper meant to the privates in the trenches. I wonder if the success of "The Wipers Times" didn't set the stage for "The Stars & Stripes" of WWII.

The only things that unite this movie with Forsyth's novel are the names of the characters and places. Eighty percent of the novel involves the setting up of a mercenary's mission to overthrow a dictator, with few instances of violence. This movie starts with a shelling of a runway where the mercenaries are escaping in an aircraft. Not so in the novel. The whole 15 minutes of Walken's visit to Zangaro, meeting with a beautiful African woman and subsequent arrest with beatings and deportation are not in the novel. The final assault in the capital is not accomplished by 11 men but by a whole group of howling mercenaries and loses much of the flavor of Forsyth's writing. If you're looking for a close adaptation of Forsyth's novel, this isn't it. But if you like a good action movie with good characters, Walken et al provides this. I've read the book and I own the movie. I recommend both.