Who Dares Wins [The Final Option] * (1982, Lewis Collins, Judy Davis, Richard Widmark, Ingrid Pitt, Edward Woodward, Robert Webber, Kenneth Griffith) – Classic Movie Review 9579

Director Ian Sharp’s 1982 gung-ho British action thriller Who Dares Wins [The Final Option] (1982) is a British SAS (Special Air Service) adventure yarn about tough guys storming in to the American Embassy in London to save an American politician held by a fanatical anti-nuclear terrorist group.

Lewis Collins stars as Captain Peter Skellen, the British officer sent in undercover, and Richard Widmark has a star support role as the US Secretary of State. Igrid Pitt plays Helga, a character based on Ulrike Meinhoff of the German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group.

Who Dares Wins is a tough-nosed, dim-witted, politically naïve thriller that tries ignominiously to cash in on the Special Air Service’s Iranian Embassy siege in London of 1981, with many of its details used for this fiction.

It is distinguished by professional performances from a strong cast, but the film, though In some ways realistic, is barely credible, intelligent, exciting or entertaining at all.

Reginald Rose’s screenplay is based on the novel The Tiptoe Boys by George Markstein.

Also in the cast are Judy Davis, Ingrid Pitt, Edward Woodward, Robert Webber, Kenneth Griffith, Norman Rodway, John Duttine, Rosalind Lloyd, Maurice Roëves, Patrick Allen, Bob Sherman, Albert Fortell, Paul Freeman, Stephen Bent, Mark Ryan and Don Fellows.

Who Dares Wins is a motto made popular by the British Special Air Service, credited to its founder Sir David Stirling. In the SAS, it is sometimes called Who Cares [who] Wins?

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9579

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