Lee Van Cleef is the main attraction here and he really acts the hell out of this role of a tough-ass sergeant who, along with a group of fellow commandos, goes undercover in Italy on a secret mission. This is an Italian/German co-production which, when we consider that those two countries were not exactly the heroes in this tale, is a bit strange. Then again I suppose it makes about as much sense as Italians romanticizing the American old-west which, of course, was a major idea in tons of films in this same decade(many also starring Mr. Van Cleef!). Overall this one is an o.k. Euro-warsploitation flick that moves along at a pretty snappy pace and has plenty of action to keep things interesting enough. There is one thing that perturbs me about this movie and that's one scene where Mr. Lee explains to his commanding officer how difficult it is to kill a man and then in almost the very next scene we see people getting stuck with knives and instantly falling over dead in a very Hollywood-style of dying. Besides that though this one is worth a look if war films are your bag.
Of interest to horror devotees, Dario Argento was one of the 5 writers on this thing(which seems like an awful lot of writers for a fairly simple story) and while there's certainly a lot of killing going on nothing is very horror-like.
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