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Hanover StreetIn between his first outing as Han Solo and taking up Indiana Jones's hat and bullwhip, carpenter-turned-actor Harrison Ford enjoyed some interesting big screen adventures.
Besides popping over to the Philippines to cameo as Colonel Lucas in Apocalypse Now, he co-starred with Robert Shaw in Force 10 From Navarone, the sequel to The Guns Of Navarone. He also appeared in Hanover Street, another World War II movie where he shared the screen with Lesley Anne-Down, the then-girlfriend of Withnail And I creator Bruce Robinson.
In an early action role, Ford plays David Halloran, an American agent who wins the affections of Anne-Down's Margaret Sellinger, a British nurse. This being a war movie, there is nothing straightforward about the couple's relationship, with Sellinger deciding to keep quiet about her marriage to UK secret serviceman Paul (Plummer). And then, in the sort of coincidence you only encounter in slightly shoddy movies, Halloran and Paul find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and forced to co-operate if either is to return to the woman they love.
A rather hackneyed drama, Hanover Street's shortcomings owe much to creator Peter Hyams, a journeymen director whose contributions to cinema include 2010, the 2001 sequel that's so weak Kubrick die-hards refer to it as 'Ten Past Eight'. Never that good with dialogue, Hyams here proves pretty poor at fostering any sexual chemistry, with Ford and Anne-Down never looking like a couple who've been waiting a lifetime to find one another. Some of the supporting turns are also a bit ropey, but when you're working with performers as diverse as stage legend Max Wall, Russ Abbott stooge Sherrie Hewson and living doll Patsy Kensit, inconsistency is perhaps to be expected.
With so much going against it, you might wonder whether Hanover Street is worth your time. Get through the rather turgid opening and you're in for a treat once the unlikely partnership of Harrison Ford and Christopher Plummer take on the Third Reich. Rather like Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin in The Edge, the pair work well in spite of their dissimilarities. He may not know his way around a paragraph, but even a hack like Peter Hyams knows how to execute a decent explosion.
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