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The Allies attempt to capture several strategically important bridges in the Netherlands in the hope of breaking the German lines. However, mismanagement and poor planning result in its failure. In , following months of economic embargo, Japan prepares to open its war against the United States with a preventive strike on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.
In , the British Royal Air Force fights a desperate battle to prevent the Luftwaffe from gaining air superiority over the English Channel as a prelude to a possible Axis invasion of the U. As the Allied armies close in, the Germans decide to blow up the last Rhine bridge, trapping their own men on the wrong side. But will it happen? Two powerful German guns control the seas past the Greek island of Navarone making the evacuation of endangered British troops on a neighboring island impossible. Air attack is useless so a team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is put ashore to meet up with partisans to try and dynamite the guns.
The mission is perilous enough anyway but are the Germans on the island getting further help too?. Guns of Navarone is an incredible movie. Everyone is just amazing in their own way. Peck is perfect as the officer who takes charge of the mission once the CO is incapacitated, Quinn is humorous and intriguing as the Greek corporal who is set on revenge against the enemy and Peck, Niven is extremely entertaining as the extremely facetious, cynical explosives expert, and the rest give the performances of their lives, particularly Darren and Irene Papas. You would be hard pressed to watch this movie and not identify with the vast array of personalities you witness.
I've never seen Anthony Quinn better. Explore popular and recently added TV series available to stream now with Prime Video. Start your free trial. Find showtimes, watch trailers, browse photos, track your Watchlist and rate your favorite movies and TV shows on your phone or tablet! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. A British team is sent to cross occupied Greek territory and destroy the massive German gun emplacement that commands a key sea channel.
Our Favorite Trailers of the Week. Share this Rating Title: The Guns of Navarone 7. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. How Do You Solve a Problem like? Learn more More Like This. Where Eagles Dare The Dirty Dozen GP Adventure Comedy War. The Longest Day The events of D-Day, told on a grand scale from both the Allied and German points of view. Force 10 from Navarone A Bridge Too Far The Eagle Has Landed Battle of the Bulge Battle of Britain The Bridge at Remagen The story is based on the Battle of Leros, and Leros island's coastal artillery guns — among the largest naval artillery guns used during World War II — that were built and used by the Italians until Italy capitulated in and subsequently used by the Germans until their defeat.
In the book, all the characters are male - I can understand why the 2 natives of Navarone were changed to women in the movie but the story makes more sense this way.
Of course, having seen the movie removed some of the tension from the book as I knew what was coming; I admire the way MacLean gives the reader clues to what will come very subtly, almost like Agatha Christie! Oct 28, Ed rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: I saw the movie on TV back in the s.
Quinn, Peck, and Niven made for an all-star cast. Finally, I read the novel. Well, sir, I'm happy to report that Alistair MacLean could tell the corker of a tale. The Allied saboteurs come through lots of close shaves still intact.
At times their heroics leave you rolling your eyes a little, but the fun is watching them strive to carry out their desperate mission. The pace is snappy, the suspense builds well, and the characters feel f I saw the movie on TV back in the s. The pace is snappy, the suspense builds well, and the characters feel full-fledged. I found myself looking forward to getting back to reading the war tale which isn't my usual cup of tea. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I just wanted some diverting entertainment which I found here in spades.
View all 16 comments. Jun 26, J. Moore rated it it was amazing. This is one of the books that took me at the edge of my seat. The action felt so real. I'm thankful that a friend recommended this to me. Jan 20, Benjamin Thomas rated it really liked it Shelves: During World War II, five men are recruited to achieve the impossible: These five men are all experts at various specialties required by the commando operation, including demolitions, engineering, and most provocatively, mountain climbing since access to the fortress is impossible without scaling a sheer cliff face.
Only the second novel by Alistair Maclean, this World War II novel has been considered a classic of the genre for decades now. These days, of course, stories or movies about a handful of talented men, each with specific specialties, teaming up to pull off a near-impossible task are a dime a dozen but I dare say many of them owe quite a bit to this book. This one, however, kept me riveted throughout. The big story payoff was literally on the last page of the book. Feb 26, Mark rated it really liked it Shelves: Tense WWII thriller about a small group of commandos that has to sabotage the naval guns on an island fortress that is otherwise nigh-impregnable.
I think what I liked the most about this is it's not got that modern action movie quality of triumphing in a series of outnumbered gun battles, which gets kind of silly after a while. It's much more about stealth and subterfuge. The other surprising quality, for me, is the prose.
MacLean really gets you feeling like the wind and rain are lashing you as Tense WWII thriller about a small group of commandos that has to sabotage the naval guns on an island fortress that is otherwise nigh-impregnable. MacLean really gets you feeling like the wind and rain are lashing you as you climb the cliff that cannot be scaled, or shivering cold as snow falls outside while you're sheltering in some remote mountain cave.
The Germans are not all nasty and cruel, which I also appreciated. It's almost too easy to make the antagonists nothing but hardcore SS scumbags.
There are some scumbag Germans to be found here, but the meeting for the Alpinekorps lieutenant and Mallory is pretty good stuff. These guys might have been friends if war didn't put them on opposite sides, and this was handled well. Very good stuff all around. I felt like I was following the action pretty well until the final escape, at which point either I lost my ability to comprehend things or the narrative became much more confusing as far as how all of the characters got back together and sailed away. That's probably all that's keeping this from a five-star rating. Tagged with Maryland vanity because the lone American character, who happens to have to do some emergency field medical stuff, declares that one would not find finer care at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
Lines like that are why the Maryland vanity shelf exists. May 05, David Evans rated it it was amazing Shelves: When I was 12 or so, one of my friends at school Michael Edworthy used to bring this book along every day as a sort of badge along with his Who and Yes albums. He couldn't have been reading it otherwise he'd have finished it rapidly. We were all careful never to mention the book in case he went on about it like he did about the bands.
Set in WW2 this is story-telling for boys of the highest calibr When I was 12 or so, one of my friends at school Michael Edworthy used to bring this book along every day as a sort of badge along with his Who and Yes albums. Set in WW2 this is story-telling for boys of the highest calibre Ha! The usual early MacLean trademarks are all here: But, as is so often the case, the book is even better than the film. As thrilling and two fistedly action packed as you'd expect a war story that has maintained its popularity for so long to be.
This has undeniably two dimensional but still entertaining characters, a wonderful variety of life it death scenarios mountain climbing, storms at sea, gun fights against impossible odds and a solid plot that holds it all together nicely. Jun 06, Erik rated it really liked it. Book bum club 1 A Book for all Seasons topic: Book became a movie. Finally finished rereading all the Alistair MacLean books that I enjoyed so much as a teen, beginning with 's outstanding HMS Ulysses and running through 's Force 10 From Navarone , after which it's pretty much universally acknowledged that the quality of his books took a pretty steep dive.
Guns of Navarone is consistently and deservedly listed among MacLean's top And yes, it features some of the ultimately predictable plot twists he loved to sprinkle in his stories - "the goo Whew!
The Making Of The Guns Of Navarone (The Magnificent 60s) - Kindle edition by Brian Hannan. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones. www.farmersmarketmusic.com: The Making of the Guns of Navarone (The Magnificent 60's) ( ): Brian Hannan: Books.
And yes, it features some of the ultimately predictable plot twists he loved to sprinkle in his stories - "the good guy was really a bad guy pretending to be good, but then he really WAS a good guy! Like a lot of older and usually British authors, I have to read with a dictionary - or at least Google - close at hand. In this case I had to turn for help on the following: Nope; turns out it's an obscure Scottish term literally meaning "to make sure," relevant here as the character shooting was Scottish like MacLean himself.
Along with Ulysses, Navarone was also one of MacLean's few books to have no female characters - generally a plus in his case as he was NOT a strong writer of female roles. That was changed along with a lot of other things in the film version, where the characters of Louki and Panayis were changed to Andrea's sister and a friend. Also in the movie, the very American character of Dusty Miller was unfortunately played by the very British David Niven - never a good casting choice.
There's still a lot of unread MacLean out there - including his last book of the 60's, Puppet on a Chain , which I may or may not have read before. But for now at least, I'll say farewell on a particularly high note. I'd say the majority of "likes" or comments on my MacLean reviews come from GR friends in South or Southeast Asia, where apparently he remains better known and appreciated than he is here in the U.
May 18, The-vault rated it really liked it. A Alistair Maclean is probably one of the most famous fiction authors of all time. The Guns of Navarone has been made into a very successful, classic feature film of the same name. Twelve hundred British soldiers are isolated and waiting on the small island of Kheros, off the Turkish coast. All these lives could be saved if only the vigilant By Alistair Maclean. All these lives could be saved if only the vigilant, savage and catastrophically accurate guns of Navarone could be silenced.
Navarone itself is a grim iron fortress, manned by a mixed garrison of Germans and Italians. To Captain Keith Mallory, skilled saboteur and trained mountaineer, falls the task of leading the small party to scale the vast, impossible precipice of Navarone to blow up the guns. The novel is set during the World War II at a time when the balance of things in the Turkish coast across the Aegean lies in a thin balance.
The Axis powers of Germany and Italy have gained control over a cluster of islands and there is a battalion of the Allied army trapped in an island near the stronghold of the Axis forces. Any and every attack on the fortress is foiled by the devastating guns of Navarone. The only way to stop the imminent defeat and the almost certain death of twelve hundred British soldiers is to remove the threat of these guns of Navarone. When the men behind the curtain are stymied, they stumble upon a solution: It is this suicide mission which is handed over to Captain Keith Mallory.
Captain Mallory, before his army days, was known as the best mountaineer ever to be produced by New Zealand and in his army days, known to be a man who could survive even behind enemy lines. Captain Mallory and his team then set off on this mission-of-no-return in order to destroy the guns of Navarone.
Crossing the precipice on the southern side of Navarone which almost killed them, they succeed in breaching the almost impregnable grim fortress of Navarone. The only task left now is to silence the guns of Navarone. The question is — will they be able to do it and in the process, not lose their lives? Alistair Maclean is the acclaimed master of the genre of war fiction. It is in every way reflected in The Guns of Navarone. The writing style is really slick, the novel is very pacey yet detailed and the storyline is very tight. The twists are so well intertwined yet so well-spaced that they do not tend to over-suffocate the inherent storyline.
The timeline and the background are so well put to use that they almost become integral characters of the plot. The central characters of Captain Mallory, Andrea and the rest of his team are really well-sketched and they truly come across as heroes. The sequences when the team is stuck and the way they come out of those situations, it was as if Alistair Maclean had himself orchestrated the war.
Overall, if you take The Guns of Navarone, know that you have a classic in your hands. Do not miss it. Oct 08, Lisa Harmonybites rated it liked it Recommends it for: Fans of Military Fiction. Recommended to Lisa Harmonybites by: The novels involves an Allied commando raid against a fortress off Turkey. A team of five men led by Captain Keith Mallory of New Zealand and including the Greek resistance fighter Andreas and an American demolitions expert Corporal Dusty Miller must climb a sheer cliff of feet considered unclimbable, infiltrate a Nazi fortress and sabotage her guns to allow through a British fleet.
At stake are the lives of 1, British soldiers stranded on an island. The novel takes place in the course of The novels involves an Allied commando raid against a fortress off Turkey. The novel takes place in the course of three days during World War II. I've been working my way through a list of suspense novel recommendations, and of the twelve I've read so far, I liked this one the most. I have a friend who calls the thriller genre "dicklit" and goodness, it's true that too many of this sort of novel suffer from testosterone toxicity.
Of those dozen novels, even though this is the one without one female character and this is the only real war novel, ironically this is the one without the macho posturing, which is something I found refreshing. They all feel fear. The young lieutenant Andy Stevens particularly struggles with his fear of fear that could prove crippling or shaming. They don't revel in violence--or at least the good guys in this novel don't. They try to avoid taking life if they can, and regret it when they can't. They use their heads not just their fists.
Which makes these characters for me both more sympathetic and more heroic than the cool he-man counterparts in the genre I've read so far. This is also well-crafted and well-written. Not only does MacLean have a fairly strong prose style, he understands that the principle of a good suspense plot is "and then it got worse. If I don't rate this higher, it's that in the end this doesn't make me want to pick up more of MacLean, or keep this novel on my bookshelves.
But this is a good read, and if you're drawn to military fiction, this is certainly a well-done example of that genre. He estado a punto de dejar de leerlo dos veces y eso que suelo acabar todo lo que empiezo. Grupo de sabotaje en Grecia durante la segunda Gran Guerra, suena interesante y la historia, lo es. Las auto arengas del equipo de asalto me han quemado mucho: Mujer, ninguna, me acabo de dar cuenta, ni de fondo o atrezzo. En fin, no se lo recomiendo a nadie. May 11, JR Bricksfield rated it really liked it Shelves: The interaction between British commando Captain Mallory and former Greek Lieutenant Colonel Andrea is captivating as the team endeavors to operate behind enemy lines, subvert the Germans, and ultimately, target the devastating guns of Navarone.
Along with his precise plot twists, MacLean makes the story realistic rather than a farfetched tale that could never have occurred. Oct 21, Loretta Gibson rated it it was amazing Shelves: Some may say that this book is outdated, in my opinion great writing is never out dated, MacLean is one of the best.
I loved this book,I did't want to put it down. It's a tense wartime thriller with a story that's believable, with fascinating characters. MacLean tells the story in a way that draws you in. My heart was beating faster as Miller scaled the unclimbed cliff face. You feel the wind, rain and the spirit numbing cold. As this group of men strive to accomplish an impossible task, you fin Some may say that this book is outdated, in my opinion great writing is never out dated, MacLean is one of the best. As this group of men strive to accomplish an impossible task, you find yourself wanting to know more about them.
Dec 16, Jordan rated it liked it. Another one I read in high school after seeing the movie a couple dozen times. A good example of decent source material elevated in the adaptation—an effective but fairly standard thriller that was turned into one of the most thrilling and morally serious meditations on war in the twentieth century. NB—Avoid the sequel, Force 10 from Navarone , at all costs.
For those of us of a certain age, any stories of daring British Commandos in action during WWII are almost like comfort food in their appeal. War should NEVER be glorified or sought after in any way, however, a story about the exploits of a few courageous souls trying to shorten a conflict and prevent the deaths of thousands of others, is worth being told, as a reminder of what it really means to be human Feb 27, Tyler Jones rated it really liked it Shelves: A four star rating based entirely on how much I loved it when I was fourteen.