Hanover Street (1979)

HANOVER STREET (1979)

By Ralph Santini - **½

Director Peter Hyam’s “Hanover Street” is one of those WWII films that you might expect a lot from it, except for those rather awry love scenes between Harrison Ford and Leslie-Anne Down. They are some of the most clichéd war film writing I have seen in such type of film. I couldn’t buy any of that treacle, especially when finding out that Ford is making the beautiful Ms. Down philander with him. That’s because she is married to an intelligence officer decently portrayed by Christopher Plummer. In fact it’s Plummer himself who has the most satisfying role in the entire flick.

The affair between Ford and Down can cause her marriage to Plummer to become very difficult especially since she and the hubby have a charming, precocious little daughter played by a very young Patsy Kensit, only 14 years Down’s junior in real life. Meanwhile Ford, who is an American Army Air Corps pilot in this film, has been engaged in to many dangerous dogfights in which one of the pilots played rather indifferently by Richard Masur constantly complains on the war getting more and more illogical. I mean after all, as they say, “war is hell”. What’s more, Ford has a bitter conflict with commanding officer played rather hammily by Shane Rimmer, a character actor I’ve never even heard of. The big problem here is that Ford is getting tired of doing those dogfights which angers the C.O. very sharply. Ford even makes an excuse making up a story of a damaged piece in his plane as an excuse to engage in an espionage that of course will be handled by Christopher Plummer, rather than another British spy who was supposed to take his position. 

Now the film’s only exciting scenes are, of course, the ones that feature an espionage adventure between the two male stars of the film themselves, Harrison Ford and Christopher Plummer, whom both love Lesley-Ann Down. They are on a mission to steal several documents from the German SS forces until something goes haywire and they engage on a risky quest to finish the espionage plot.

“Hanover Street” isn’t a bad film, it simply takes too long to present the espionage adventure between Ford and Plummer and, unfortunately, concentrates too much on the rather cloying love scenes between Ford and Down and the marriage beneath Down and Plummer and their kid. I would have prefer the film to be re-written with a lot more focus on the espionage nature and very minimal romance. As a result, this is just a war film filled with those awkward romantic clichés that don’t seem to fit with a WWII espionage subplot that could have make “Hanover Street” better.