Ensofter Overrated and overhyped

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Robert J. Maxwell The Sahara -- Years Ago! Land of Sand, Riffs, Adventure, and beaded curtains! Also fairy tales like this story. Burt Lancaster is a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion, head of a pack of madcap ne'er-do-wells including some of the leading lights among the supporting players of the 40s and 50s. There's Gilbert Roland, Mike Mazurky, George Tobias and John Dehner. Yes, they will fight over a pair of socks but share the last drop in their canteen with the others. When they die, it's with a joke on their lips. ("Why does the chicken cross the road?") One for all; all for one. For added thrills and laughs, there is Mari Blanchard in a canary yellow dress and a fluffy hair do of the same tint.Lancaster and his men capture a Riff prisoner and bring him back to Lieutenant Kruger in temporary charge of the base at Tafra. Kruger is played meanly by Stephen Bekassy. Bekassy was a Hungarian but no matter. One foreign accent sounds much like any other to Hollywood's ears, and it's as well that the mean guy should be a German because 1951 was only six years after the end of World War II and we still hadn't forgiven the Nazis. Bekassy and Lancaster hate each other. And while Bekassy is busy torturing the Riff prisoner, Lancaster's Sergeant Kinkaid does roughly to Bekassy's girl friend what Lancaster's Sergeant Warden did to HIS captain's wife in "From Here to Eternity." Result: Lancaster and his musketeers are sent on a dangerous mission through the desert in order to avert a Riff attack on the undermanned base. They kidnap a princess who is the cause of it all and gallop off into the wasteland. This is some princess too, well worth kidnapping, even if it doesn't prevent a war. Jody Lawrance, in dark makeup, is sublimely beautiful and sexy. She burns with hatred for the Legionnaires. She glares at them with irises the color of obsidian. When she speaks her voice is low, throaty, piercing, menacing, bitter, conjuring up personal images of marriages past. And she's awfully cute when she's mad. The men, of course, all want to ravage her -- except for Lancaster, who saves her from their brutality. For a moment, Lancaster and princess clinch while the ghost of Rimsky-Korsakoff plays a romantic tune in the background.Situation Report. The half-dozen or so legionnaires are hustling across the desert with the sultry princess in tow, pursued by a multitude of black-robed, outraged, and frustrated Elf Kings. The chase is not without its hazard. Three of the legionnaires are picked off, each after some heroic deed, expiring in the arms of a comrade, always cheerful. "Londos, you're hurt bad." "I'm cashing in my chips, Mike, but why -- why -- did Descartes suddenly disappear in the wine shop? (Gasp.)" The ending is a Donneybrook in the enemy camp, so comic it could be Bing Crosby and Bob Hope instead of Lancaster's men. There are tense moments when a Riff has Lancaster pinned under him, both men straining against the Arab dagger, only quivering inches from Lancaster's taut face. Do Burt and his men save the fort? Does Burt get the girl? Is that supposed to be a joke? Burt Lancaster is at his best here. With a few exceptions like "Atlantic City," he was never much of a serious actor but he was great in these early adventure roles. He pulled out all the stops to magisterial comic effect. His grin is filled with Chiclets. He bounces around as if he were half his actual size, limber but not muscle bound. Off the screen he was an equally admirable altruist. Lots of fun.

James Hitchcock This film dates from Burt Lancaster's swashbuckling period when he was trying to inherit Errol Flynn's mantle as Hollywood's leading action hero. "The Flame and the Arrow", for example, is a disguised remake of Flynn's greatest hit, "The Adventures of Robin Hood", with the story transferred from England to Italy, and "The Crimson Pirate" is in the same tradition as Flynn's "The Sea Hawk".It has long been an Anglo-American jibe that the Foreign Legion is the greatest fighting force in the French Army "because it has no Frenchmen in it", and the exploits of the Legion have always been popular with film-makers. Although many Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were opposed to European colonialism, such opinions were rarely reflected in Hollywood films- "The Hurricane" from the late thirties is an exception- and "Ten Tall Men", which is set during the Rif War of the 1920s, takes a firmly pro- French position. Morocco was still a French colony in 1951, and the producers may have thought that an anti-colonialist stance would not go down well in the French market.The film has something in common with the Gregory Peck Western "Only the Valiant" which appeared in the same year. In that film Peck plays a US cavalry officer who commands a small force tasked with holding off the Indians for long enough to allow reinforcements to reach a garrison threatened with attack. Here Lancaster plays Mike Kincaid, an American- born sergeant with the Legion, who commands a small force (the "ten tall men" of the title) tasked with holding off the Rifs for long enough to allow reinforcements to reach the threatened city of Tarfa. In both cases the small hand-picked force is largely recruited from the inmates of a military prison. (Kincaid himself has been imprisoned for striking an obnoxious Lieutenant in defence of a lady).The main difference is that "Only the Valiant" took this scenario seriously, whereas "Ten Tall Men" is, by and large, a comedy, or at least a comedy/action hybrid. (In common with a number of films which tried to combine humour with adventure, the Bob Hope vehicle "The Paleface" being another example, there is a surprisingly high death toll). As part of his plan to foil the raid on Tarfa, Kincaid kidnaps Mahla, the beautiful fiancée the of villainous Rif leader Caid Hussein and, inevitably, the two end up falling in love. (It seems to be a widely-held belief in Hollywood that the quickest way to a woman's heart is to kidnap her). Equally inevitably, Mahla is played by an American actress, Jody Lawrance, rather than a Moroccan one."Ten Tall Men" is a better film than "Only the Valiant", which even Peck acknowledged as one of his weakest, precisely because the latter treats an implausible scenario seriously, whereas the former takes a very similar scenario and treats it in a more light-hearted manner. As a swashbuckling hero Lancaster was not in the same league as Flynn- he was to achieve more later in his career when he reinvented himself as a serious actor- but here he is charismatic enough to keep the film watchable, with the aid of some well-handled action sequences. 6/10

MartinHafer Despite the presence of Burt Lancaster, this is a very ordinary sort of French Foreign Legion film. You certainly WON'T be reminded of "Beau Geste" when you see "Ten Tall Men".Lancaster plays a trouble-loving sergeant. However disrespectful and crazy he behaves, however, he's loyal and very brave. So, when he hears that the evil Hussin is planning an attack, he's quick to volunteer to take a group of nine men and try to delay Hussin's men. But, when they arrive in his camp in disguise, they learn that Hussin is about to marry the daughter of his hated rival from another clan. And, in doing so, he'll united the clans and be strong enough to beat the Legion. So, they impulsively decide to kidnap the lady--figuring that this way the two tribes will not become one. Much of the rest of the film consists of Lancaster and his men running from the pursuers.I assume that if you love the colonial system, you will be more favorably disposed towards this film. After all, if you think about it, you could just as easily root for the rebels as they are trying to rid their land of foreign invaders. As for me, the deciding factor for not loving the film had much more to do with the very pedestrian nature of the movie. Nothing caught my interest and it seemed more like a B-movie with color than anything else. It had a lot of clichés (such as the falling in love bit that came from out of no where) and an ending that just seemed rushed and, again, clichéd. Not a terrible film--just not a good one either.By the way, look for Robert Clary (of "Hogan's Heroes" fame) in a small part as one of the natives.

The Novelist An impressive 38 year old Burt Lancaster appears in this mediocre film. He was a perfectionist when it came to working with ambitious amateurs who had more aspiration than talent. Although there is no one film that I like about Lancaster, he was impressive at 38.