The Hill Reviews

I had no idea what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Sean Connery, I thought I might as well check it out. To be honest, I had never heard of the damned thing before but it turned out to be so much better than I expected. Eventually, it’s too bad I saw it on the BBC without subtitles but, even though I did struggle with the dialogues, the damned thing was still quite impressive. Indeed, even though it did start like a rather conventional POW story, eventually, it turned out to be one of the bleakest anti-army movies I have ever seen. In fact, the story was not actually dealing with some regular POW’s but with a military prison with some British soldier convicted for some minor offences such as insubordination, being drunk while on duty, going AWOL or petty theft. So, everyone involved, guards and prisoners alike, were all soldiers on the same side and, yet, the treatment displayed went way beyond only ‘punishing’ the convicted soldiers. Indeed, they had to face such sadistic treatment that all the men sharing this cell slowly became pretty much mad. Seriously, towards the end, the situation got completely out of hand and the whole thing was just a massive chaos but it was actually quite fascinating to behold. For Sean Connery, this movie was the opportunity to show that he could do something else than James Bond and while you might expect him to play your usual tough guy, his character turned out to be slightly more complex and Connery definitely delivered here one of his best performances. Anyway, to conclude, even if it is a really obscure movie, it is actually really good and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.