A Prize of Arms Reviews

Baker plays a British ex-captain cashiered for black market activities in Hamburg. In order to get his revenge on the army, he thinks up a complicated scheme for heisting the money that will accompany the troops as they take off for North Africa to resolve the Suez crisis. He has enlisted the help of Schmid and Bell in his plan, which requires that the three pose as soldiers while infiltrating the barracks for twelve hours. The carefully thought-out timetable goes haywire when one of the men gets cookhouse duty and another gets sick from an inoculation. But Baker makes off with the cash through the use of a flamethrower, only to be followed by the military police and eventually sending the money up in flames. Well-paced direction keeps the tension mounting, with the cast lending the proper measure of machismo to their roles. A pure caper film with no romance, the film has an all-male cast except for a bit part.