36 Hours

Set during the Second World War, 36 Hours follows American intelligence officer Jeff Pike (James Garner) as he’s kidnapped by Nazi soldiers and, in an effort at discovering his secrets, tricked into believing that the war ended years ago. It’s an absurd yet irresistible premise that does, at the outset, hold a tremendous amount of promise, as filmmaker George Seaton, after overcoming an excessively deliberate opening stretch, generally does an effective job of exploiting the Truman Show-like bent of the movie’s setup – with the entertainingly implausible atmosphere heightened by Garner’s predictably sterling turn as the affable lead. (And it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that Seaton has elicited solid work from a top-notch supporting cast that includes Rod Taylor and Eva Marie Saint.) It’s disappointing to note, then, 36 Hours abandons its high-concept atmosphere far too quickly and progresses into a distressingly conventional midsection that grows less and less interesting as time progresses, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the climactic stretch is hardly able to generate the excitement that Seaton has obviously intended – which cements the picture’s place as a mostly unsuccessful endeavor that entirely squanders as irresistible a setup as one could possibly envision.

** out of ****