OK, so, it's not a classic, nor is it a masterpiece, but let's be fair here: it' entertaining and in my own personal opinion, underrated. Some historic inaccuracies are indeed blatant, but hey, it's an adventure movie, not a historic one. If you wish to watch a history based one look elsewhere, but if you like to see Telly Savalas in his heyday, and as usual rather strong and harsh performance, then this movie is really made for us.
Strangely, when I watched the movie (made one year earlier than the "Dirty Dozen"), I couldn't help thinking at parallelisms with Lee Marvin's depiction of. Major Reisman, who was indeed a tough cookie and a S. O. B., just as the character Savalas plays in this one.
One cannot but wonder how Telly Savalas finally got to play Major Wright in the last two sequels to the original "Dirty Dozen" bunch. Probably because someone may have seen his role in this movie.
The rest of the cast does a competent and convincing job, and even Leslie Nielsen (who went in his later days to play. Frank Drebin in the successful Comedy series "The Naked Gun" among others), did depict the Commander of the Foreign Legion's Regiment with distinctiveness.
But as said, if you expected a faithful retelling of the original story you came to the wrong place. This take is quite different and depicts probably a bit better, without romantic interludes, the harsh and cruel realities that made out the Foreign Legion.
One could consider it a forerunner to the later produced "March or Die" (1977), starring Gene Hackman, Terence Hill and Catherine Deneuve, but as stated, without any female participation.
As such I consider it a discreet movie that should be left as a solo effort, without comparing it to any other similarly titled film.
In my view, the only mistake the producers and director made, was indeed to name it "Beau Geste". They could easily have changed the names in it and titled it "The hard life of the Legionnaires", which would indeed have had more honesty in it. Another title that comes to mind could have been "Lost in a Dream of Freedom".
But whatever other title would have been given to it, it would certainly have attracted audiences of the time to go and watch it.
Sometimes it is the wrong choices that make some movies appear as either bad pictures, or as poor productions, when in reality there a many other worse examples, both in story telling, as well as in performance.
This indeed is a worthy movie to be watched as it is, since if one forgets for a moment the so called realism, and tries to take in the moral values that it attempts to convey, one might find that this film actually succeeded in its projection of this message.
I for one enjoyed it as one of the better small movies made in the mid-sixties, particularly for the interaction among all the characters, which came through as honest without all the "schmaltz" (sweetness) that similar movies try to infuse in such stories.
Try to watch it in this spirit, forgetting both the title and its original source and you will see that in the end you will be satisfied by it.
