The Desert Rats

There are very few things to recommend in this rousingly heroic tribute to the Australian and British forces whose valiant 242 day defence of Tobruk against the rampaging German forces during the North African campaign was one of the legendary battles of World War II. 

One is James Mason’s quite brief appearance as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, a role he played in the 1951 film The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel and which is here given a von Stroheim-like Prussian-ness. The other is Richard Burton as Capt. 'Tammy' MacRoberts a hard-ball British officer in charge of a rag-tag bunch of ANZACs held in some sort of order by their Sargeant, played by Chips Rafferty (Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell plays their commanding officer) .  

If Mason’s appearance is little more than a cameo, Burton adds some manly intensity to Richard Murphy's dutifully generic script which presents the battle for Tobruk as a triumph for Allied pluck, determination and ingenuity over superior German numbers and firepower. Shot in the deserts of California, the film quite effectively recreates the North African battlescape although the action sequences are tame by today’s standard with some over-obvious use made of archival footage to eke out the credibility.

Robert Wise's direction is workmanlike but a sub-plot involving MacRoberts and his former headmaster (a mis-cast Robert Newton) now an alcoholic foot-soldier jars with the overall commitment to giving us the factual history of the event.  That alone, and done better than here, would have been a preferable outcome.

 

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