Blu-ray Review – The Passage

With 1979's "The Passage," director J. Lee Thompson returns to the Men on a Mission formula that served him well during 1961's "The Guns of Navarone," out to mastermind a cinematic take on Bruce Nicolaysen's novel. It's a return to a World War II landscape, this time taking the action to the Pyrenees mountains, where a story of survival is allowed time to explore numerous physical and psychological challenges. While Thompson brings a meaty, action-centric mood to the feature, he's less certain with its dramatic capabilities, rendering "The Passage" a strange mix of indulgence and inattentiveness, with the production as a whole struggling to define its tone as the effort swings from nobility to camp without warning. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com