1 9 4 4. US Army Major Jefferson Pike is completing the final plans of Allied attack on the Third Reich through Normandy. In Lisbon, he drinks a potion prepared by German soldiers and falls unconscious. When he wakes up in a hospital, a man tells him he is in Germany in the year 1 9 5 0, and that World War II is long over, and that the Americans won. But Pike is unaware that the entire hospital is fake and that the Nazis want him to reveal the secret plans of Allied invasion of the Third Reich. Pike finally finds out it is still the year 1 9 4 4, but he already revealed that the attack will come from Normandy. Luckily, German General Otto does not believe it and allows Pike and nurse Anna to flee to Swiss territory.
Thriller "36 Hours" is not a classic, but for its time it has a very original and astounding concept in which a man is tricked into thinking he was in a coma for six years, when in reality he was just asleep for a day, in order to reveal secret informations during World War II. As he wakes up, he even finds grey hairs as he watches himself in the mirror. The way the protagonist Jefferson Pike (very good James Garner) is observed by the conspirators and the sheer scale of people who are acting this ploy throughout is eerie and scary, reminiscent of "The Truman Show" which referenced it, and thus a wonderful mood is created, even posing some philosphical, disturbing questions about the reliability of reality. However, by uncovering that a soldier is a Nazi through the latter's salute, the hero already discovered and dismantled the whole illusion already 60 minutes into the film, and told them that, and thus the magic ended too soon. The remaining 50 minutes of the film covers his escape from the German soldiers, which is somewhat boring and conventionally spy-ish. Only the ending is able to resume the good quality from the first half, when a Nazi proclaims: "Today, you don't know whom to trust anymore".
Grade:++
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