Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Excellent, smart action film.

A Disappointing Continuation

This a wonderful film with a stellar cast headed by Humphrey Bogart. Seldom did a war film reflect so well the combined effort of the countries involved. There seemed to be a greater understanding of the wider struggle, and genuine understanding and mutual respect between the nations. Great to see Dan Duryea in a heroic role, with marvellous support from Rex Ingram, J. Carrol Naish, Bruce Bennett and the lesser known actors such as Carl Harbord and Louis Mercier. The movie has a lot of humanity, reflected especially when they don't let the Italian prisoner onto the overcrowded truck, but then change their mind. It brings to mind Ice Cold in Alex in which the greater enemy for both sides is the desert.. Not seen the remake, but I think I will pass on it.

Wartime classic film with powerful direction by Zoltan Korda including scenarios set in Lybia desert but filmed in Southern California desert, Palm Springs, and Yuma, Arizona , being based upon an incident in the Soviet film ¨The Thirteen¨ directed by Mikhail Romm and made about six years prior to this movie . "In June, 1942, a small detachment of American tanks with American crews, joined the British Eighth Army in North Africa to get experience in desert warfare under actual battle conditions. History as proved that they learned their lesson well" . While the WWII raged in Europe American/British troops were fighting in a far part of the world , North Africa . Small solitary patrols moved over the vast Libyan desert that seemed on fire with the sun . The molten sky gloated over them . The endless desert wore the blank look of death . Yet these men marched on without a murmur , fighting an unseen German enemy who always struck in the dark . Sergeant Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart replaced Brian Donlevy for this Columbia Studios film whilst Donlevy in turn replaced Bogart on the same studio's ¨Once Upon a Time¨ and even originally offered to Gary Cooper, who turned it down) and his tank (called Lulubelle" is a M3 Lee tank) crew (Bruce Bennett, Dan Duryea) pick up five British soldiers , a Frenchman and a Sudanese man (Rex Ingram) with an Italian prisoner (J. Carrol Naish who was nominated for Oscar) crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their army after the fall of Tobruk . A brave group of American and British soldiers lost in the desert are shot by the Germans , one by one and some battered fighting men battle it out to the finish . Dead the official commander they are ruled by the sergeant , then arise boiling passions in the burning sands . The bunch works together to vanquish a much larger Nazi army that wishes the same water well that they have . ¨The film is dedicated to the IV Armored Corps of the Army Ground Forces, United States Army, whose cooperation made it possible to tell this story." The motion picture gets brief psychological remarks about diverse characters , and although is completely developed on the wide desert , the tale results to be a little claustrophobic . Produced by Columbia Pictures with a script by the black-listed John Howard Lawson and as executive producer Harry Joe Brown . Philip MCDonald (story's author being based the movie) had been recruited in the British cavalry during WWI (1917) and he ulteriorly wrote an intrigue and suspense tale , adding his war memories and taking an incident based on the Soviet Photoplay "The Thirteen" . The film contains Miklos Rozsa's powerful and emotive musical score . Very good cinematography in white and black by Rudolph Mate was nominated for Academy Award . The Sahara desert in this movie was portrayed by the California desert's Borego Desert which is located in the Imperial Valley, north of the American-Mexican border as well as Brawley, Imperial County, California ; Chatsworth, California and the sand dunes of Yuma, Arizona . Two thousand tons of sand were transported to the filming set in order to create the feel of loose desert sand, the shadows were spray-painted on desert hills to make them be seen more clearly by the audience ; moreover, sand dune ripples were created by spray-painting the sand with light paint and then turning on a wind-machine.Magnificent direction by the British Zoltan Korda and excellent interpretations make this a very good film . This particular story was former and subsequently remade and reworked several times : The first time by John Ford in ¨The lost patrol¨ with Victor McLagen and Boris Karloff ¨ set in Mesopotamia ; ¨Bataan¨ by Tay Garnett with Robert Taylor in Philippines jungle ; ¨Last of Comanches¨ made by the same studio about a decade later , was loosely based on this movie , realized by Andre De Toth with Broderick Crawford in Califonia desert ; and even part of ¨Flight of Phoenix¨ by Robert Aldrich in Sahara desert . The motion picture will appeal to cinema classic moviegoers .

During the years 1941-'44, Warner Bros. star Humphrey Bogart made no less than six films that dealt with the ongoing Second World War for the studio. First there was "All Through the Night," a tremendously entertaining action/comedy that had Bogie and pals going up against Nazi saboteurs in NYC. Then came "Across the Pacific," with Bogie foiling a Japanese plot to blow up the Panama Canal; the justly beloved "Casablanca," with Bogie aiding a resistance fighter at the cost of his lady love; "Action in the North Atlantic," a cat-and-mouse actioner involving German subs; "Passage to Marseilles," a tale of the Free French on the high seas; and "To Have and Have Not," in which Bogie met Lauren Bacall's "Slim" and helped a French underground leader in Martinique. And then there is the film "Sahara," which Bogie did not make for Warners, but rather when on loan to Columbia. Released in November '43, it was Columbia's highest grosser of that year, pulling in $2.3 million in its first three weeks (big money back then!). As it turns out, the film is one of the best of Bogie's war-years bunch; certainly the toughest, most violent and grittiest. Featuring an all-male cast and some tremendous battle sequences, the film sports a very high body count, and to its credit, there is no way for any viewer to foretell who will survive in the cast and who will not; most, sadly, do not.In the film, Bogart plays an American sergeant named Joe Gunn (you've gotta love that name!), a tank commander attached to the British 8th Army in North Africa, right around the time that Gen. Rommel's Africa Korps captured Tobruk (that would make it June '42). Cut off from his unit, Gunn retreats in his "M3 air-cooled" tank (which he's named Lulubelle) along with fellow Americans Doyle (the great Dan Duryea) and Waco (Bruce Bennett, who would go on to costar with Bogart in two of my personal favorite films, "Dark Passage" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"). Before long, they encounter a group comprised of British, French, Irish and South African soldiers (one of whom is played by Lloyd Bridges), and then a British Sudanese soldier (Rex Ingram, who many will remember as the genie from the classic British fantasy "The Thief of Bagdad") with an Italian captive (the great character actor J. Carrol Naish). After shooting down and capturing a German flier, the motley band manages to find a bare minimum of water at the well at Bir Acroma, and runs into big trouble when a German motorized unit of 500 men gathers at that same well. And this leads to a remarkably intense sequence in which Bogart and his eight fellows must defend themselves against some pretty formidable odds, to say the least, in a microcosm of the larger war...."Sahara" was directed by Zoltan Korda, the Hungarian director who had turned the 1939 African-desert war film "The Four Feathers" into such a shining success. His direction of the battle sequences here is simply aces, abetted by some beautiful B&W lensing from renowned cinematographer Rudolph Mate and an exciting score by fellow Hungarian Miklos Rozsa (who had also provided the scores for "The Four Feathers" and "The Thief of Bagdad"). The film's screenplay, by Korda and John Howard Lawson, gives us ample opportunity to get to know each of the men in Bogart's group, and they are an extremely likable bunch of guys. Thus, when they are offed one by one, the viewer feels as if he is losing someone he knows and cares about, and, as mentioned, most of these guys, sadly, do not make it to the end. All the characters in the film get their moment to shine or behave heroically, especially Ingram, and the speech that Naish delivers on the differences between the Italian and the German is a memorable one (he was Oscar nominated for his work here). And as for Bogie, he gets to give a very moving speech himself, regarding why men must fight against insuperable odds; a speech that invokes Dunkirk, Bataan and Corregidor, and one that Victor Laszlo might well have smiled on in approbation. His Sgt. Gunn is a wonderful character, a tough and seasoned soldier with a decent heart, and his ministrations to Lulubelle--which he calls "old girl"--may bring to mind his Charlie Allnut's similar handling of The African Queen. As revealed in Sperber and Lax' Bogart biography, as well as the online journal of (then Second Lt.) Kenneth Koyen, "Sahara" was filmed in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (the largest state park in California), 235 feet below sea level on the western shore of the Salton Sea. Despite the midwinter shoot, temps were still in the 90s, and the desert setting proved to be a very convincing substitute for the Libyan Sahara. Bogart managed to keep his cool physically with a steady supply of Thermos-encased martinis, only losing his cool when clashing with director Korda by day and brawling with wife Mayo Methot at night (appropriately enough, the cast and crew were ensconced at the nearby town of, uh, Brawley, where Kurt Kreuger, who played the sneaky German flier, bonded with Bogart over drinks). Despite the heat, the less than desirable accommodations, the fights and Bogart's heavy drinking, the picture turned out to be a formidable accomplishment; not only a hard-hitting, rousing and inspirational war film, but also another great victory for Bogart, riding extremely high post-"Casablanca" and on his way to becoming the highest-paid actor in the world ($460K a year by 1946; again, big money back then!). I hadn't seen "Sahara" in over 35 years until the other night, and was amazed at how many images from the film had stayed with me. Dedicated to the American IV Armored Corps of the Army Ground Forces (many of whom appeared as German soldiers in the film!), it is an experience not easily forgotten.

Humphrey Bogart is tough Army Sgt. Joe Gunner whose British tank crew picks up several other military stragglers in the Libyan desert while fighting a much larger group of German soldiers dying of thirst and anxious to get to the nearest water hole.The battle scenes are gritty and convincing as the men under Bogart's direction try to subdue and outsmart the Germans. His Sgt. Joe Gunner is one of his feistiest performances and he gets good support from an outstanding group of actors including Bruce Bennett, J. Carrol Naish and Dan Duryea.Oddly enough, not made at his home studio Warner Brothers, this one is released by Columbia and directed by Zoltan Korda. The director fills the screen with realistic shots of sand and desert, North African style, with an all male cast. The usual stereotypes among soldiers in WWII films are kept to a minimum and the action scenes are plenty explosive and feel like the real thing.Well worth watching.