Night Ambush
Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Year Released: 1957
Rating: 1.5
Almost laughably simple-minded: Dirk Bogarde and his 'swifty' British soldiers are sent to kidnap a German general but have to get past all the guards and whatnot - we're supposed to be impressed by his ingenuity and wit but it all comes off as facile WWII TV fodder. "Light humor" comes in the form of a man who hasn't bathed in six months and the accompanying running gag is how no one wants to be downwind of him. Powell and Pressburger's films tend to be so overloaded with significance (Powell's Peeping Tom, the masterpiece Black Narcissus) that this comes across as just a paycheck, or, at the most, a horrendously weak effort by two typically distinctive filmmakers.
