VON RYAN'S EXPRESS (1965) **1/2 I kind of like these pre-Vietnam (protest) era war films: they're so straightforward. These days when they make a war flick they either just make it entirely stupid and gory, or they moralize all over the place. Back then there wasn't much point trying to carry on a conversation with anyone who thought shooting at the Nazis might not be a good idea. It was simpler then, because it was simpler. So they trot out Frank Sinatra, surround him with actors good enough to keep things real but not great enough to show him up, and get right down to it. I have to say that I'm a little surprised to see Frank front and center in a film that makes Italians look so bad, generally, but he was a pretty blunt kind of guy. That shows in the role, too, he takes over and doesn't care whether anyone likes it, doesn't bother trying to explain much of it to 'em, and hatches a clever plan, and then another one, and so on until it works. If there are several fairly major problems with the plot that's not a deal-breaker, everyone knows what the problem was and that it was real. Only 20 years after the war ended, that's not a very long time. The memories were still fresh enough that you didn't have to bring them back to the surface.
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