Hanover Street

Every Memorial Day weekend, I go back to find a war film that I haven't seen in years. This year, it was 1979's HANOVER STREET.

Between "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back", newly minted movie star Harrison Ford filmed this throwback war film that bombed like the Blitz at the box office.

I remember seeing it opening weekend and wondering where the funny dude that played Han Solo was.

I was (and am) doubly disappointed because this was from Writer/Director Peter Hyams, who was riding a serious high in 1979 after delivering "Capricorn One" two summers before. Surely between Ford and Hyams, audiences were in for a great war flick.

Well, No.

Let's first talk about what really works in the movie.

John Barry's old fashioned, romantic music score is top of the list. The James Bond composer delivers a lush full orchestra and some memorable themes. It's another in a long line of great music from Barry.

David Watkin (Out of Africa, Chariots of Fire) is a legendary cinematographer and he shoots the film beautifully. Everything looks like a perfect painting of the English countryside and classic, stately war rooms.

OK, now that we've talked about what works, let's talk about everything else.

As the titles begin, they're in the cursive, large style of a 1940's era romance.

The opening scene features what Roger Ebert used to call a "meet cute" with American pilot David Halloran (Ford) waiting for a double decker bus near the Hanover Street station in London. English Nurse Margaret Sellinger (the gorgeous Lesley-Anne Down) cuts in front of him and they banter, leading to a long afternoon of posh tea and some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard in a movie.

Hyams wrote the original script and its saddled with horrific speaking parts from start to finish. People on planet Earth do NOT talk like this.

At first, I thought maybe Hyams was just trying to adopt the film style of a 1940's war film, but I think that's giving him far too much credit for being clever. This is the equivalent of AI spitting out every movie cliche into one plot.

The film pops back and forth from Halloran's bombing raids to Ford and Down staring wistfully into each other's eyes, drinking tea and driving through the countryside. I think the only cliche they missed was a scenes with them riding on horseback across an English pasture.

Richard Masur (The Thing, Risky Business) is annoying as hell as nose gunner Cimino. It's not the actor's fault. Hyams writes him page after page of nagging dialogue and then features that voice over chatter the first time the bombers take off. How about letting Barry's music soar as the American bombers take off into the sky? No, lets just have a bitchy character whine about his neurosis for three minutes. Painful.

About halfway through the film, we meet Christopher Plummer as Margaret's husband, Paul. He's a senior spy in the English military, training a mole to infiltrate Gestapo headquarters and steal a list of blah blah blah out of a safe.....honestly, the story is so sloppy, I cant be too bothered.

In perhaps one of the dumbest motivations in any war film ever made, Paul decides to take off on the top super secret ultra dangerous mission on his own.

Guess which pilot is going to take him there and drop him behind enemy lines?

Do you think something will happen to that flight?

Wait until he reveals why he did it!

Will Margaret find out that both her lover and husband are down behind Nazi lines?

Honestly, if that sounds like a 1970's soap opera, it is, but the dialogue is worse.

I laughed out loud at least three times at the way these people talk to each other. The jokes are flat, every word is stilted.

The film shows a blip of life in the final twenty minutes as Plummer and Ford try to escape the Nazis, but its way too little, way too late.

It's fascinating to see Ford here, before Empire and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" took him to the stratosphere. He's quieter, skinnier and "less" all-around than he would become just a year later. But no one could look good trying to spill Hyams words out of their mouths.

I'm a huge fan of some of Hyams other films, especially "Running Scared" and "2010". Hey everyone has a turkey once in awhile. This one is a big fat Christmas turkey, stuffed with cliches jammed into a forced, stupid plot.

Only Barry and Watkin save it from an F, elevating it slightly to a dull & boring D.