Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Kayden
This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama
alexanderdavies-99382
There is absolutely nothing to recommend about "They Who Dare." I think the title "They Who Dare to Make this Film" would have been more appropriate.
The dialogue and the plot are so boring!! Tedium soon sets in as our heroes talk their way to victory, rather than actually fighting the enemy. Dirk Bogarde must have been looking forward to his earnings, that's all I can say. He clearly doesn't feel the need to act much here. Mind you, I daresay most other actors would feel the same way.
There is no attempt to infuse a spark of imagination into the dialogue. It is merely a case of going through the motions.
MartinHafer
Dirk Bogarde plays the leader of this group of commandos. Their mission is to split into two groups and simultaneously destroy two airbases in Axis controlled Greece. The immediacy and importance of the mission isn't so obvious in this one and most of the commandos are rather faceless characters.Sometimes movies don't age well for a variety of reasons. In the case of "They Who Dare", the problem is that less than a decade after this film debuted, a very similar yet much, much better movie came out and far surpassed it. So, if today you watch the film, you're very likely to think "Wow....THE GUNS OF NAVARONE sure did this sort of thing better!"...and you'd be correct. Both films are about an international group of commandos who are secreted onto a Greek island to disrupt the Axis. With Navarone, the objective were those freakin' big guns. Here with "They Who Dare" it's an attack on two airbases. The latter film is better mostly because it has a better cast, more interesting script and a nice Hollywood polish this one lacks. Now it's not a bad film...but it certainly isn't close to the quality of the latter film.By the way, one way this film differed greatly was that once the guns were blown up, the British Navy arrived and rescued the heroes. However, in this Bogarde film, the mission is completed and then they have to work their way OUT of Greece...kind of on their own! And, this makes up a substantial portion of the film...which also makes the film run on way too long.
JohnHowardReid
Please note that my vote of 9/10 applies only to the 92-minutes version. The 107 minutes version I would rate as 5/10, or maybe 6/10 at the most.The problem with the long version -- and the reason "They Who Dare" earned so many scathing and unenthusiastic reviews on its first release back in 1953 -- centers on inconsistencies and other defects in scriptwriter Robert Westerby's characterizations. Recognizing that these complaints were legitimate and that Dirk Bogarde's box office popularity was being undermined, the movie was withdrawn and expertly cut down to 92 minutes.As far as I'm concerned, the cutdown concentrates on action, and as these sequences are directed with Lewis Milestone's usual bravura, I'm not going to quibble about a few little, trifling elements of confusion that I may have in following the plotting and the storyline.
Gloede_The_Saint
Not sure what I expected from this one. Dirk Bogarde is my favorite actor and I have had pleasant encounters with Milestone as well. Here the latter screws up on multiple occasions.First off the cinematography is way too light and some of the shots are rather clumsy. The script could be faltered as well. And some of the acting, especially from the one playing a character who keeps singing this awful and quite annoying tune.Mind you it's not bad. Bogarde's performance makes it worth while. But really if it hadn't been for him this would have been below mediocrity. It got a few strong moments and whenever Bogarde is on screen you nearly forget everything else that has been going on.I will not recommend this but overall it was OK. I think the casting apartment did some horrible choices though.