What makes it different from others?

just watch it!

Best movie ever!

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

What a difference a few years make! "Raid on Rommel" came out in 1971. As fate would have it, it was at the tail end of WW II movies with plots of far-fetched fiction. Seeing it again, after all these years, I still enjoy it for the action and for the different twists it had from other similar ventures. Sure, it uses some of the excellent footage Universal shot for "Tobruk" four years earlier. That film, with Rock Hudson and George Peppard, scores just a little higher than this one on the IMDb charts so far. Other reviewers, who noted the use of the same footage from other films, weren't too harsh on this movie. Most of the criticism of the film has been based on its far-fetched plot. The film didn't purport to be a true or real event. And it was in good company. Hollywood produced several war flicks over a decade that had very far-out fictitious plots. The production of the make-believe war plots got a big push in Hollywood with "The Guns of Navarone." That 1961 blockbuster was produced by Columbia, and had a huge cast of big names to go with a thrilling and action-packed story. Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, James Daren and Richard Harris head the cast that included some other fine actors.But it was MGM that scored with the most hits. "The Dirty Dozen," in 1967 is one of the higher scoring war films by IMDb viewers. It came close to matching the Navarone cast, with big names of the day that included Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland, Richard Jaeckel, John Cassavetes, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and Clint Walker. MGM hit it big again the next year with "Where Eagles Dare." Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood were the two stars in what I think is one of the very best war films ever made. Then, in 1970, MGM had another winner with "Kelly's Heroes." That box-office hit also had a big cast of very familiar names. Besides Eastwood, other leads were played by Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, Gavin MacLeod, and repeats Sutherland and Savalas.Universal tried its hand in the fantasy war film arena in 1967 with Tobruk. It starred Rock Hudson and George Peppard. While it was well- liked, it didn't score as well then, or now, as the others films. So, after the three successive MGM hits, one can understand why Universal would want to give it another try. Especially since they had some great footage already shot in other films, most notably Tobruk. But, this time they went for a single big name, Richard Burton, to head the cast. Others have noted that this sub-genre of make-believe war films was coming to an end – or had come by the time of "Raid on Rommel." Universal's gamble didn't pay off. It went with a single big name, a cast of much less-known actors, a low budget and rehashed older film. All of that, with the viewing public's tiring of such films, ended with a film that bombed with the critics and did little better at the box office.Still, I think the performances of the supporting cast in "Raid on Rommel" were all quite good. There was just enough mystery and intrigue. And the few different twists with good action add up to a most enjoyable war picture in my book.

What an awful mish-mash of a movie. Lacking direction, mediocre acting, appalling editing. One wonders who approves the making of films like this. I can't even put this kind of propaganda in context (1971)- hooray the West democracies can win sometimes ? Surely movie-makers have some respect for their craft, and even with low-budget pot-boilers they'd bother with script,continuity,plot and character development ? Why were the (British) propaganda war films during, and just after, World War 2 so sophisticated and nuanced and yet so many rubbish war films made from the 1970s onwards ? So much for the linear-development of cinema as art. Some genres have 'naturally' petered out, such as Westerns. Hollywood only rarely re-captures the wit and humour of pre-war rom-coms. "Art house" films are mere pretension and few are both experimental and touch the audience. "Serious" war films are one-dimensional. This film doesn't pretend to be serious, but really...it should never have been made.

Looking at the criticisms of poor Richard Burton for taking a role in Raid on Rommel makes me want to put a word in for him. Acting was a craft as well as an art to him, it's how he made his living. I'm sure he got a good pay day out of Raid on Rommel. I think he also wanted to try the action genre as well. He made a much better choice with Where Eagles Dare though.It's a poorly conceived story from start to finish. Someone in Allied Headquarters in London had the brilliant idea of freeing a bunch of captive commandos in North Africa and send them on a mission to Tobruk to spike some harbor guns. Same idea as in Guns of Navarone. So Burton gets the job. But upon executing the escape he discovers he has freed a bunch of medical personnel and hardly enough commandos. Never mind he uses what he has.His mission is to blow up those guns, but on discovering a fuel depot for Rommel he makes a little side trip to blow it up. Hello, but I think he was compromising the mission he was sent on. Wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to do the job you're assigned to and then when you got out you tell headquarters and they do another mission? That makes more sense to me.The fuel depot sequences and the finale with the guns at Tobruk harbor are taken from the Rock Hudson film a few years earlier. Burton gives a rather pedestrian performance as does the rest of the cast.By the way as if our heroes didn't have enough on their hands they're also transporting the mistress of an Italian general. That man wasn't going to sacrifice any of the comforts of the homefront. They keep her all doped up and at one point, one of the commandos decides to sacrifice for king and country and give his all for the mission. Just who was the dope who thought her up?

There are a lot of bizarre chains of circumstance which set up the plot of this. People just happen to have talents and interests which assist the plot, others have very improbable reasons for being where they are, and so on.But if you can forget about the artificially convenient, this is a pretty good tale, pretty well told. A medical corps unit, and some of its patients, who start out as captives, end up, under the leadership of Richard Burton, being a commando team who play a vital part in the assault on Tobruk. Oh, and there's a girl in there somewhere.There are plenty of tense moments, adventures, incidents, and so on. People get shot, things get blown up, the Germans are uniformly stupid except for Rommel, the military genius.It's got all the ingredients (even if it did borrow some of the more spectacular explosions and so on from another movie), and the actors are as convincing as they can be given their improbable backgrounds.A perfectly enjoyable, inconsequential, undemanding movie which makes two hours or so pass pleasantly enough.