Operation Daybreak

As with other war films around this time, the problems of dramatic reconstruction are never reconciled with those of historical perspective. Based on the assassination in 1941 of Reinhard Heydrich (the Nazi leader in Czechoslovakia) and the subsequent German reprisals, the film unhappily mixes scrupulous accuracy with too much shoddily-rendered suspense. Apart from Anton Diffring's Heydrich, the characters are painted in black and white, so that the film falls apart when one of the freedom fighters unconvincingly becomes a turncoat. Only in the last ten minutes or so, with the final shootout and death of the last two assassins, does the film get to grips at all. Otherwise an over-routine journey.