You Can't Win 'Em All

In my quest of tracking down starring Charles Bronson features; "You Can't Win 'Em All" aka "Soldiers of Fortune" was one of the hardest to come by. In which is a bit a surprise, because it's rather an entertainingly sturdy old-fashion boy's own adventure with feverish plotting, buoyant performances and striking scenic locations on show. Think of another Bronson feature "Villa Rides" made two years before it, as the story is kind of similar but set in a different time, different place.

It's 1922 and two former U.S army soldiers Adam Dyer and Josh Corey meet under unusual circumstances, where these rivals join together as a group of mercenaries in Turkey. They're hired by a local governor for a mission through the Mediterranean, which includes transporting his three daughters and a gold shipment. This leads to a lot of devious developments occurring on the war-torn journey.

Charles Bronson and Tony Curtis simply clicked together as the two soldiers of fortune. Curtis' happy-go-lucky approach matched up well with Bronson's laconically calculated manner. Both provided many amusingly perceptive quips, as they try to out wit each other. The snappy script keeps the sharp humour and comic elements on the cards. This along side the illustratively sun-baked Turkey backdrop with its local flavour and revolutionary wars gave British director Peter Collinson an excitingly colourful frame to work with. His uniformed handling is lively, tough and sprawling in its made-up spectacles. Random opportunities knock for the characters to take up and so does the rough and tumble action. It's punchy with enough bangs for you buck, as the madcap narrative moves at a locomotive pace. Bert Kaempfert's flighty music score is a majestically sounding arrangement that suit's the film's epic framework and exotic locations. The cast also features the likes of Leo Gordon (who also penned the film's screenplay), Patrick Magee, Horst Janson, Tony Bonner and extremely beautiful Michèle Mercier.

"You Can't Win 'Em All" is an agreeably fitting and strong-willed adventure comedy escapism.

Another reviewer has called this "better than it had to be", which I think is right on the money. This is not a history lesson, nor is Shakespeare, but it uses an obscure period of history to tell an adventure story without insulting anyone's intelligence.

It is a remake of "Vera Cruz", the 1952 Western with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. Except Curtis' character is much wittier than Cooper's, and Bronson's character is not a psychopath. Both changes make it easier to watch, although not as dramatic. Both movies have anachronisms, but I think many of the anachronisms in "You can't Win 'em All" are sardonically recognized.

There are easy parallels between the chaos of 1867 Mexico and 1922 Turkey. In both there were uncertain loyalties at the end of an Imperial rule and a major conflict had ended nearby, leaving a pool of unemployed killers. In both a nationalistic regime replaced the Old Order, and neither Juarez nor Attaturk were choirboys. But the movie is neither history lesson nor moral polemic, just a cheerful adventure story.

This is a competent adventure movie pairing, of all people, Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson. It's setting is an obscure one for Americans: Turkey in its days of revolutionary war following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Dynasty in World War I. Bronson and his band of mercs have tommy guns but don't get to use them as much as you might expect. On no best-of list, but this movie is a bit better than it had to be, and worth a look.

This exciting story is set in 1922, Turkish War of Independence, in revolutionary days during fall of the Ottoman Empire . The War resulted the defeat of Greece in Western Turkey (Greco-Turkish war), on the East, Armenian state and Britain, France and Georgia. It begins at the Aegean sea when a shipwrecked of a boat called Achiles is rescued . Then two former US soldiers (Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson) along with a band (Leo Gordon who also wrote the script, Horst Janson, Tony Bonner, among others) and wielding several Thomson machine-guns join forces a group of Turkish revolutionaries. They are contacted by Osman Bey (Gregoire Aslan), to escort his daughters accompanied by a gorgeous servant (Michelle Mercier). They're commanded by the colonel Elch (Hakan), while some rebels pursue them and attack the train. The film is set in 1922 , following the defeat of Ottoman Empire that led Mustafa Kemal, Attaturk (role well played by Patrick McGee), he commanded the Turkish national movement in the war of independence. His successful military campaigns led to liberation of the country and to the establishing of Turkey. He transformed the former Ottoman Empire into a democratic, modern, secular nation-state , his reforms are referred as Kemalism. Ankara became the new capital and Kemal abolished the Caliphate and Sultanate. Later on, the treaty of Lausana ,signed July 24, 1923, established most of the modern boundaries of the country and also led to the international recognition of the new Republic as the successor state of the defunct Ottoman Empire under government of Attaturk.

The picture is packed with adventures, shootouts,noisy action, tongue in cheek , well developed characters, and wonderful outdoors from Turkey. This is an old-fashioned and grand adventure about some mercenaries who travel from a port until Smyrna in order to rob a loot. Splendid characterization from Tony Curtis as joker,sympathetic adventurer and Charles Bronson as tough,two-fisted mercenary. The producers wish to thank the government and people of Turkey without whose help and co-operation this motion picture could not have been made. The entire filming of this production took place in Turkey with the interior of the Osman Bay palace photographed at Said Halim Pasha Manor.

This moving film is well directed by Peter Collinson. Collinson's royal directorial treatment provides it with action, gun-play, humor and majestic sweep. He was an expert on thriller (Sell out, Target on assassin), suspense (Spiral staircase, Ten little Indians, Open season), terror(Straight on till morning), Warlike-adventure(You can't win ém all), his biggest hit was ¨The Italian job¨ , until his early death by cancer at 41.

You Can't Win 'Em All (1970)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining action film has former WW1 soldiers traveling to Turkey where they are hired by Osman Bey to help guard a gold shipment but after countless double crossings and twists, the soldiers begin to realize that there might be something more at stake than just gold. It's important to note that the soldiers are played by Tony Curtis and Charles Bronson and those names are big enough to make you want to keep watching even when the film itself starts to unravel and come apart. The movie gets off to a great start as Curtis is stranded at sea in a sinking boat and gets picked up by captain Bronson but before he can get on the two have a nice exchange of words. The first twenty-minutes of the movie are fast, sharp and contain some very funny moments but all of this stuff pretty much goes away once the center story kicks in. I never really could get too involved with the story in Turkey simply because it really didn't feel all that real and I also thought it was rather poorly written. I think there's way too much story trying to go on and there's really nothing behind it because the main goal is just to get to the next action scene. As far as the action goes, we get a couple excellent sequences. The opening bar fight is pretty good but the real highlight comes towards the middle of the film when the train carrying the gold comes under attack. After viewing the movie I had to do a Google search to see how many stuntmen got killed in this sequence but apparently it was none. The physical stunts are extremely graphic and there are a few scenes where horses are tripping off one another and there's one instant that will really stick out because it seems the human riding it gets crushed during all the mayhem. There's another big action piece at the end, which results in another twist in the story that actually works pretty good. The main draw of this movie is going to be seeing Curtis and Bronson together and they actually do a pretty good job. I thought that laid back, smart ass attitude of Curtis worked perfectly well with Bronson stone cold approach. The two are simply so different that when they mix it up they just come off very funny. The banter between the men in the bar at the start of the film is certainly one of the highlights. YOU CAN'T WIN 'EM ALL is far from a masterpiece and in reality it's not even a good movie. With that said, fans of the two stars will probably want to check it out but others will probably not find too much to keep them watching from start to finish.