Hanover Street

The setting for this romantic action/adventure is the war-torn Europe, where the fateful entanglements of two men in love with the same woman unfold. Lt. David Halloran (Harrison Ford), a courageous American bomber pilot, and a British nurse (Lesley-Anne Down) accidentally meet during an air raid and fall instantly in love. Committed to an assignment, David asks her to meet him two weeks later, despite the fact that she is married. Her husband, Paul Sellinger (Christopher Plummer), is a British intelligence officer in charge of a special, dangerous mission behind enemy lines. As fate would have it, Halloran is chosen to fly Sellinger on the task. When their plane is shot down, the two must work together to complete the mission - and it is only then that Halloran discovers who Sellinger is.

Harrison Ford is impossibly young and handsome as an American pilot in the World War II romance Hanover Street; Lesley-Anne Down (The Great Train Robbery) is stunningly beautiful as the British nurse who falls in love with him, despite being married to British intelligence agent Christopher Plummer. In fact, everything about Hanover Street is just a little over the top, from the insanely romantic dialogue to the absurd war-buddy banter of Ford and his bomber crew to the love-making montage in which Down seems to have at least a dozen orgasms. Down and Plummer have a daughter (played by future Lethal Weapon 2 love interest Patsy Kensit) who's so precious and precocious you just want to smack her. The whole thing is almost a camp pastiche of a war romance--but when Ford and Plummer find themselves together behind enemy lines, you'll suddenly discover that you're caught up in the story. Through sheer movie-star charisma and cunningly ridiculous plot mechanics, Hanover Street becomes not only entertaining, but even touching. Plummer is particularly good as an ordinary man who wishes to become something more, Ford is stalwart as only he can be, and Down is just too lovely to resist (it's hard to understand how her career ended up with the likes of Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxus and Death Wish 5: The Face of Death). All in all, a surprisingly enjoyable cinematic experience.

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