Stylish but barely mediocre overall

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

VIEWERS' GUIDE: The censor says, "Suitable for all". Who am I to argue?COMMENT: Although Mason again essays the role of Rommel, he makes only a few brief appearances and plays the character differently from his study in The Desert Fox. Half the time he speaks German with an English accent, and the other half English with a German accent! What is more, he comes closer to the conventional Hollywood portrait of the Nazi officer, playing Wagner in his tent and exchanging "Ve will conquer zee vorld!" dialogue with Richard Burton's sassy British POW.Of course, these changes are not directly attributable to Mason, but are the work of the scriptwriter and the director, who could not have anticipated that The Desert Fox and Desert Rats would be re-issued as a double bill. All the same, it is disconcerting.Otherwise, both writing and direction are very smooth. Richard Burton and Robert Newton are ingeniously worked into the cast, Robert Douglas makes an acceptable C.O. and there are some dinky-di Aussies on hand including Chips Rafferty, Charles Tingwell and Michael Pate (most of whose part, he tells me, landed on the cutting-room floor).The action scenes are excitingly staged, but on the whole the film is a mite disappointing. The direction is too restrained, too soberly realistic, and doesn't go all out for the grand adventure epic like Hathaway's Lives of a Bengal Lancer or Chauvel's 40,000 Horsemen that the film's publicity leads us to expect.On the other hand, the fictitious narrative involving Newton and Burton, though ingenious, is neither convincing enough nor sufficiently realistic to put the film in the semi-documentary category. So the film tends to fall between two stools. This is unfortunate as within its limits, the film does well, and successfully accomplishes what it sets out to do, namely to provide an entertaining and action-filled if fictitious narrative, set against the realistic backdrop of the siege of Tobruk.

THE DESERT RATS is something of a follow-up to THE DESERT FOX, which also starred James Mason as Erwin Rommel and covered some of the North African campaign. However the emphasis of this film is very much on the Allied forces, particularly an Australian platoon who baulk at their new captain, the Scottish Tammy MacRoberts.First off, the title is a misnomer; this isn't about the 'desert rats' but rather about the siege of Tobruk and the dedicated men who fought back against the encircling Nazi siege. Richard Burton is well cast as the heroic leader of men and brings the kind of gravitas to the part that only he can deliver. The desert-set action is quite familiar from other war films (and there are a LOT of desert-themed war films in existence) but what makes this one work is a fast pace and some good supporting cast members.Mason doesn't have a big role to play in this film although he does get to share a strong scene with Burton. The other soldiers are played by Robert Newton, the delightful Chips Rafferty, movie villain Torin Thatcher, and Charles Tingwell. The story runs the usual gamut of heroism and capture, escape and death, and builds to a suspenseful against-the-odds climax. It's certainly not one of the finest war films in existence but as war films go it's a solid enough effort.

I am sure there were hundreds of films based on World War II. In this case, the Allies are in Northern Africa where they capture German Nazi Rommel. I just wanted to see Richard Burton act in this film. The location is in the desert with the oppressive heat. The Allies are fighting the Nazis. The film is a depiction of the battle of Tobruk. I don't know much about the Second World War in Northern Africa but Rommel was also known as the desert fox. The cast is fine but the story line appears to be slow moving too. James Mason is fine as Rommel. I can't compare his performance to anybody playing Rommel so he was fine to me. I hate to write that my ignorance fails me when it comes to the battlefields of any war.

Richard Burton gives his usual splendid, stiff, explosive performance as Lt. Col. MacRoberts, an English ("Pommy") officer put in charge of Australian and New Zealand troops at Tobruk. There is some natural resentment on the part of the colonials. On top of that, Robert Newton is in his company, and Newton was Burton's old schoolmaster, now turned into a semi-coward.Tobruk at the time was a crummy seaport surrounded by the Afrika Corps. Rommel was dashing all over the place more or less at will, except that his attack on Tobruk had failed. Rommel would eventually take Tobruk too, but by then the Allies had landed in Rommel's rear and he was now facing two front instead of one. To his further disadvantage, the German code had been cracked by the British, so they knew when ships with Rommel's supplies were to leave Italy. Few of the supply ships got through to the German and Italian troops in Africa. By El Alamein Rommel was losing two-thirds of his supply ships. It was not just an inconvenience. At times the Germans had to drain several tanks and abandon them, in order to fuel another. Not knowing the code had been broken, the Germans blamed the Italians for blabbing after they were taken prisoner. Rommel distrusted the Italians and their generals, one of the more operatic of which, Ettore Bastico, Rommel nicknamed "Bombastico." Anyway, Burton is quite good and his support is too, including James Mason as Rommel. I admire Burton a lot and it may be heresy to suggest this but I wonder if he was the great actor everyone seemed to think. It was his voice that did it for him. "My name is Richard Burton -- and I've bean through hell." His Hamlet was misconceived. During the famous soliloquy he shuffles back and forth like a plastic bear in an amusement-park shooting gallery and hustles through the lines.James Mason comes up with an absolutely unbearable German accent as General Rommel. "Come now, MacWooberts, I shushpect dzat you alweady know dzah answer." A year earlier he had given us an unimpeachable Rommel in "The Desert Fox." Rommel was so humanized that there were objections from the critics. Mason was TOO NICE. So here, playing the role a second time, he goes back to World War II stereotypes and plays Rommel as formal, condescending, and sneaky. He listens to Wagner while snapping out orders.This is still a good war flick within the limitations of the genre at the time. The action scenes are exciting. The dialog is crisp and believable, mostly. There are some chronological goofs. Planes attacking the German trucks in Africa are TBFs from the Pacific Theater. And the Germans seem to be using American water-cooled Browning machine guns. And makeup has failed. The desert rats don't look like desert rats; they look like sewer rats -- oily and pale. And instead of dust, dirt is indicated by a smear of grease on somebody's cheek. It's a retrogressive flag waver that commits an easily avoided sin; it doesn't even TRY to capture the majesty of a vast and empty desert.