And after the horror of Outpost in Morocco, this was such a welcome change of pace for the New Year's Day Videofest 2005 (theme: Deserts).

Of course, we spent the first 15 minutes of this flick talking about how wonderful Humphrey Bogart is, how awful George Raft was in the previous movie as a Bogie wannabe, and generally emitted noises of relief. Then we all got something to drink and settled down to enjoy this movie.

And enjoyable it was! An excellent war movie (I can hear the Barracuda now, as in my youth, intoning "The Horrors of War" as she did during so many war flicks that I dragged her to), with good, interesting characters and situations, some serious suspense, and lots of gunfire and explosions.

And Bogie. Yes, he's a Serious Honey. Rowf. Curmudgeonly, charming, funny, delivering his lines with excellent timing, he's just a pip. This one would be worth watching just for him, but all the actors are good. Rent or buy it, you won't regret spending an evening with this one.