tomsview It would be hard to find two braver soldiers in WW2 than Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík This film is a worthy tribute to them. Although not without flaws, Lewis Gilbert's film is an impressive work nonetheless.The film tells the true story of the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, the Nazi governor of Czechoslovakia, by Czech members of Britain's SOE. These included Sergeant Jan Kubiš (Timothy Bottoms), Sergeant Jozef Gabčík (Anthony Andrews) and Sergeant Karel Čurda (Martin Shaw). The story is full of heroism, but also treachery.The whole plan was so audacious it plays like Hollywood fiction, but it really happened pretty much as shown here. Although the mission was successful, the vengeance of the Nazis was terrible. The movie ends as the small band of agents are trapped in a church and go down fighting."Operation Daybreak" breathes authenticity. Scenes of the Nazi's pomp and ceremony at railway stations and in the ornate buildings of Prague are striking. It is obvious that the mainly British cast were at pains to capture the essence of their characters, but it is Anton Diffring who steals the movie in the showier role of Heydrich.Unfortunately the film is saddled with a weak score – even for a 1970's movie. The music has no feeling for the period and is jarring in places. It shows the power music has to change the mood of a film. A bizarre credit proudly proclaims that the score was composed by David Hentchel and performed on an A.R.P. Synthesiser. Hentchel's tinny chords are easily overshadowed by Deutschland über alles, the most powerful theme heard in the movie.The film also has long passages in German without subtitles. I remember seeing this film on TV years ago and it didn't have them then, and I wonder if it ever had them.I can recall at least three other movies that depict Heydrich's assassination, including two made during the war – "Hitler's Madman" and "Hangman Also Die!". Oddly, the depiction of the assassination in the otherwise well-researched mini-series "Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil", shows it taking place in the open countryside. This despite being made ten years after "Operation Daybreak", which re-enacted the event on the street corner in Prague where it happened.Director Lewis Gilbert had made some of the best British war movies by the time he made this, and although films like "Reach for the Sky", "Sink the Bismarck" and "Carve Her name with Pride" incorporated fictional characters and elements, "Operation Daybreak" seems to stick much closer to the facts.The final battle in the church is spectacular, despite the intrusion of Hentchel's score. According to information on the Internet, it's hard to know exactly what happened, although the film goes with the most accepted version of events.With an amazing true story, fascinating locale and the integrity of the filmmakers, "Operation Daybreak" rises above its flaws. In the end, it is a film that hits home.

glenn-aylett I haven't seen Operation Daybreak for many years and saw a recording last night as there was a blizzard outside and the television had gone off. Firstly, as this is based on a true story and doesn't deviate much from what really happened in Prague in 1942, Operation Daybreak is one of the best war films of all time, even if it has fallen off the radar since the seventies.Basically the plot is about a group of Czech resistance fighters(a very young Martin Shaw and Anthony Andrews play their roles excellently), who are parachuted into Czechoslovakia to assassinate the infamous, Reinhard Heydrich, second in command to Heinrich Himmler, the creator of the Holocaust and brutal governor of the country. As ever Anton Diffring is on top form doing what he does best, playing cold eyed Nazis( ironically in real life Diffring hated the Nazis and fled the country in 1939 as he was both gay and anti Nazi, something the real life Heydrich would have hated). Also Heydrich is portrayed as both a cold hearted killer and a devoted family man, again quite true to life.Yet apart from a top notch performance from Diffring, Martin Shaw and Anthony Andrews take excellent roles as the assassins, an original plan to open fire on Heydrich's special train goes wrong when another train passes, so they decide to gun him down in his open top Mercedes in Prague. True to real life events, Shaw's machine gun sticks and Heydrich is felled by a grenade thrown into the car, which leads to the evil Obergruppenfueher having to endure a slow, agonising death in hospital from internal injuries. However, in a twist to the story, with the Nazis carrying out massive reprisals for the death of Heydrich, Shaw decides to go to the Nazis and confess all, helped along by some torture, if the Gestapo leave his family alone. (In a cruel twist the Nazis torture and kill his entire family, which proves this was worthless, but Shaw continues his treachery by revealing where the resistance fighters are hiding).This is where Operation Daybreak turns into a battle worthy of better known epics, where the resistance fighters are hidden in the crypt of a church run by a sympathetic priest, played most ably by Cyril Shaps. Again largely true to events, the six resistance fighters manage to take out a large number of SS men, before the Nazis decide to flood the crypt and faced with either death by drowning, or terrible punishment by the Nazis, take their own lives.I would recommend Operation Daybreak to anyone who wants to watch a war film based on true events( the death of Heydrich has been covered before in Hangmen Also Die, but this has dated badly and was made on hearsay during the war) and also because the cast, which also includes Timothy Bottoms, Joss Ackland and Nicola Pagett, play such convincing and sympathetic roles. It's interesting as a sidenote that the scenes in Prague were actually filmed there, rather than a mock up, which is interesting as this was the height of the Cold War.

kankawin25013 Operation Daybreak is the World War II movie which adopted from the actual Operation Anthropoid ,occurred in 1942, and some parts are from the novel "Seven Men at Daybreak". It's very interesting that this movie filmed use more than 80% of actual event as the screenplay and many things looked very realistic.I think this movie has 2 parts. First is the thrilling for every viewer in the SOE's mission to kill General Reinhard Heydrick. (SOE is the British's Secret Service Organization before they changed to MI6) Everyone can see Heydrick's notoriously action which made him "the Butcher of Plague" before his assassination. This part can make everyone think about the operation and could judge about what Heydrick's deserved. Another part is about the tragedy that occurred until the end of the movie.In my opinion, Operation Daybreak is the very interesting film which everyone who likes in history should see. The most part of the film is inspired by actual story even it is not the documentary. Nevertheless, due to it's not completely "hero" film, everyone should understand the crew and the circumstance during World War II in order to understand this movie.At last, if you like history, this is one of your choices, but don't hope too much about "the beautiful way of the film".

mwleonard-1 We visited Prague last month as part of a tour of the "Blue Danube" which included Vienna and Budapest. Prague is one of the most fascinating and beautiful cities we've ever seen, and the tour guides showed us the church where the commandos took refuge, and also mentioned the legend of the crown of Saint Wenceslas (where Heydrich puts in on his head) at Prague Castle. Since we returned I've been reading up on the incident, and ordered the DVD from Korea. For an older, low budget film, they did a very good job in sticking to the true story. The music was a little annoying, and it's too bad they didn't have subtitles for the German characters. I'm reading a book on the fate of Lidice, and found an excellent publication from the Czech Ministry of Defense web site called "Assassination: Operation Anthropoid 1941-42". It can be downloaded at www.army.cz.