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THE BACKGROUND
Operation Market Garden
The Film is based around Operation Market Garden which was proposed by General Bernard Montgomery soon after the D-Day invasion. The combined ground and airborne attack was designed to gain crossings over the large Dutch rivers, the Maas, Waal and Neder Rijn, to aid the armoured advance of the British 2nd Army.
On 17th September 1944, three divisions of the 1st Allied Airborne Corps, dropping by parachute and gliders, landed near the Dutch towns of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem in order to take the eight key bridges. The planners called this an “airborne carpet" along which the British 30th Corps, advancing at the same time from the Meuse-Escaut Canal, could push through to Germany.
The bridges at Nijmegen and Eindhoven were taken, but a German counter-attack created problems at Arnhem. Of the 9,000 Allied troops at Arnhem, only 2,400 remained when they were ordered to withdraw across the Rhine on 25th September.
THE STORY
"What better time for a robbery, than under the fog of war"
September 1944. In a daring attempt to end the war by Christmas, the British High Command hatch an extraordinary plan - Operation Market Garden - 35,000 allied troops dropped by air into German occupied Holland.
In the midst of the largest airborne invasion in history, one small unit of men, codename 'Matchbox', has its own hidden agenda. While the rest of the British soldiers operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, the seemingly innocuous Corporal POWELL - in reality an undercover intelligence officer - has been given a secret objective.
The true target - sanctioned by no less a figure than Winston Churchill himself - is a vast horde of Dutch gold and art treasures, plundered by the Nazis and stored behind an impregnable bobby-trapped safe, imminently bound for Berlin.
BENITTA and SASKIA, two brave and resourceful women with the Dutch underground have managed to ascertain the location of the treasure and somehow ingratiated themselves with the spectacularly vile SS Major KESSLER to act as housekeepers where the riches are stored. Risking their lives they've communicated to British intelligence in a hope to foil the plan and help liberate their occupied country.
Powell and his men must evade the might of the German counter-attack at Arnhem, locate, secure and retrieve the stolen loot, and find safe passage back to British soil. This near-impossible heist all takes place from beneath the nose of KESSLER and his crack team of Storm troopers.
Difficult enough, but when Matchbox are shot down short of their landing zone and reduced in a firefight to only six men, the odds of their success seem hopeless. With the courageous Captain BANKS killed, Powell is forced into commandeering the help of the remaining soldiers: WELLINGS, a naive medical orderly; IVES, a smart mouthed, petty thief; BAKER, a drunken psychotic with bomb disposal expertise; MCMILLAN, a wounded battle hardened Sergeant, and lastly, OATES, a smooth talking Canadian pilot with a roving eye for the ladies...
However they are not the only ones in search of the treasure. Renegade German soldiers acting like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Lieutenant VOLLER, and Sergeant BECK also intend to snatch the loot from the SS - (Kessler’s operation having originally been established by Voller before he was betrayed by his one time partner, the weasely book-keeper GUSTAF). Kessler arranged for VOLLER to be sent to the Russian front where he miraculously escaped the disaster of Stalingrad. Knowing the war is all-but over, Voller not only intends to steal everything but also wreak his revenge on those that wronged him.
As the three groups race to secure the treasure, the film twists and turns towards an enthralling climax. Will Kessler secure the loot for his masters in Berlin? Will Powell and Matchbox survive and get there in time to make the treasure safe for Churchill? Will Voller & Beck snatch the gold and head for the Swiss border, having first tricked their way through American lines dressed as GI's… or will the snake in the grass Gustaf beat them all to the sucker-punch? Then again it all depends on whether the arriving Allied forces decide to shell them all into oblivion first.
Kelly’s Hero’s meets Oceans Eleven - THE LAST DROP is a daring heist that takes place during a war - it doesn’t get more dangerous than that... |
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