Clevercell Very disappointing...

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

PamelaShort I Was Monty's Double is based on the real events of actor M.E.Clifton James who is hired to impersonate General Montgomery and so confuse the Germans by having him popping up in odd places, thus misleading the enemy into thinking the D-Day invasion just might take place at a location other than Normandy. The film itself broadly follows the account by Clifton James in his book of the same name, with the exception of a fictitious attempt to kidnap him. This story is extremely enjoyable watching the real life-double James as he learns to copy General Montgomery's mannerisms and style. John Mills is excellent in his role as James guide and supporter. The story is portrayed with a lot of good humour and is very well-done and well-acted by all, but it is the performance by M.E.Clifton James himself that makes this film extremely fascinating and most entertaining to watch.

Andy Howlett I love this film and even though I have now bought it on DVD I never miss it when it turns up on TV. The writing, script and direction are bang on the nail, and the blend of tension, drama and gentle humour is perfectly judged. There are also several short moments of genuinely touching human warmth which are often missing from films of this nature. The one or two historical inaccuracies in the script do not detract at all from the sheer excellence of this marvellous picture.Even the theme music is beautifully matched to the content - a mixture of swaggering triumph and comedic undertone. The fact that the film is based (mostly!) on a real story is the cherry on the cake.

bkoganbing With some considerable dramatic license the story of one of the best intelligence operations of World War II is told in I Was Monty's Double. The film is based on the book by actor F.E. Clifton James who plays himself and Bernard Law Montgomery as he did for a fateful few weeks in World War II.John Mills and Cecil Parker two officers from British Intelligence become James's handlers in the terminology we would use today. Mills while attending a service variety show sees James do a walk on as Field Marshal Montgomery and is struck by the audience reaction to him. The germ of an idea comes to Mills to have the actor play Montgomery for the widest audience possible, to give him a grand tour of the various fronts of the war. This in order to divert Nazi attention from the United Kingdom where the cross channel invasion is being prepared and Montgomery very much a part of the planning. In fact you can see some of his real role there in the TV mini-series Ike and in The Longest Day.Of course James carried the masquerade off beautifully. My favorite scene is James at a press conference in Cairo with allied war correspondents where he's at first hesitant with this cynical bunch, but grows in confidence and wins them over with a speech that you might have seen the real Bernard Law Montgomery deliver during his lifetime.Two others who give noteworthy performances in the film are Michael Hordern as the Governor General of Gibraltar and Marius Goring who is a German agent whom Mills, Parker and James deliberately give misinformation to in order to confirm how effective the plan is working.The whole business in the end is pure fiction which I won't reveal, but that doesn't detract from making this a first rate account of an amazing adventure. One even Stephen Spielberg would envy.

ilprofessore-1 It's hard not to imagine that Bryan Forbes who wrote the script for this 1958 film was not influenced by the James Bond character who first appeared in the Ian Fleming book "Casino Royale" published in England in 1953. As the first Bond film was not released until 1962, the character John Mills plays --cheeky, disrespectful of authority, as adept with women as he is in intelligence work-- is either a predecessor to 007 or an affectionate borrowing from Fleming's novel. Up until then, British men were usually depicted on screen as stiff-upper lip, decent chaps who did their jobs without complaining; surely never distracted from defending the Empire by a pretty face. Mills, with his enormous charm and good looks, introduced a new type of Brit to cinema audiences --sexy, funny and sometimes outrageous-- a character which Sean Connery was to play to perfection many years later.