ESCAPE TO ATHENA. ITC Films, UK, 1979. Roger Moore, Telly Savalas, David Niven, Stefanie Powers, Claudia Cardinale, Richard Roundtree, Sonny Bono, Elliott Gould. Director: George P. Cosmatos.

   In the past several years of writing movie reviews, I’m more than certain I’ve used the word “uneven” to describe a movie. In fact, I’m sure I’ve used it fairly often, because let’s face it: a lot of movies are uneven. Some are even “highly uneven.” But nothing prepared me for the unevenness exhibited in the comedy/war film/adventure film mash-up that is Escape to Athena.

   Take the first half hour of this movie, for example. It’s a cross between a gritty WW2 thriller and a lighthearted imitation of Hogan’s Heroes.

   A bunch of Americans, as well as an Italian cook and British scholar, are being held captive in a German prison camp on a Greek island. The stalag commandant, Major Otto Hecht (Roger Moore) utilizes his prisoners’ free labor to dig up ancient Greek artifacts. Soon enough, he’s got two more prisoners on his hands: two recently captured USO performers, the wisecracking Charlie (Elliott Gould) and his traveling companion Dottie (Stefanie Powers). Gould plays it for laughs, more than once speaking in Yiddish. Mel Brooks was able to pull this type of balancing act off. It simply doesn’t work here.

   As far as the gritty thriller aspect, that’s also a focal point of the film’s first half-hour. Those scenes feel as if they were set in a different cinematic universe entirely. In the local town on the same Greek island, local resistance leader Zeno (Telly Savalas) is hoping to prevent the SS from executing more civilians. The contrast between these rather downbeat sequences and the lighthearted humorous (although decidedly not funny) moments in the stalag could not be greater.

   But somehow, despite all expectations on my part, the two distinctly different films eventually mesh into one somewhat enjoyable action film, following Zeno as he begins to work with the escapees from the prison camp to stop the Nazis from repelling an Allied invasion. Unfortunately, it takes about an hour until there’s a consistent tone to the movie. At that point, Escape to Athena becomes a standard action film, albeit one with an extraordinarily well-filmed motorcycle chase through the narrow alleyways of Rhodes.

   A couple of final thoughts. (1) Roger Moore, while always a delight to see on the screen, is not well cast in his role as a German officer. His faux accent isn’t convincing anyone and (2) Lalo Schifrin’s score, which includes Greek influenced renditions of American patriotic tunes, works quite well. It is one of the things that is consistently good in this otherwise extremely uneven film.