The Hill

Sean Connery took a break from Bond to give a sterling performance in this awesomely intense drama set in a North African British army camp, where the favourite punishment for prisoners is to send them clambering up and down a man-made hill in the full heat of the day. A lot of screaming and barking issues from the British thesps, and every bead of sweat is visible in Oswald Morris' brilliant monochrome photography. Lumet's strengths (the moral universe as an all-male enclave) and weaknesses (set the volume high, then turn it up higher) are all here. Not for the faint-hearted.