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IMDbPro

Ike: Countdown to D-Day

  • TV Movie
  • 20042004
  • PGPG
  • 1h 29m
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
3.5K
YOUR RATING
Tom Selleck in Ike: Countdown to D-Day (2004)
DramaHistoryWar
A dramatization of the 90 days leading up to Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and how General Dwight Eisenhower, against all odds, brilliantly orchestrated the most impor... Read allA dramatization of the 90 days leading up to Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and how General Dwight Eisenhower, against all odds, brilliantly orchestrated the most important military maneuver in modern history.A dramatization of the 90 days leading up to Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and how General Dwight Eisenhower, against all odds, brilliantly orchestrated the most important military maneuver in modern history.
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
3.5K
YOUR RATING
    • Robert Harmon
    • Lionel Chetwynd
  • Stars
    • Tom Selleck
    • James Remar
    • Timothy Bottoms
    • Robert Harmon
    • Lionel Chetwynd
  • Stars
    • Tom Selleck
    • James Remar
    • Timothy Bottoms
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 53User reviews
    • 1Critic review
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 6 Primetime Emmys

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    Top cast

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    Tom Selleck
    Tom Selleck
    • Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
    James Remar
    James Remar
    • Gen. Omar Bradley
    Timothy Bottoms
    Timothy Bottoms
    • Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith
    Ian Mune
    Ian Mune
    • Prime Minister Winston Churchill
    Bruce Phillips
    Bruce Phillips
    • Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery
    John Bach
    John Bach
    • Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory
    Nick Blake
    • Air Marshal Arthur W. Tedder
    Kevin J. Wilson
    Kevin J. Wilson
    • RAdm. Bert Ramsay
    Gerald McRaney
    Gerald McRaney
    • Gen. George S. Patton
    Christopher James Baker
    Christopher James Baker
    • Group Cpt. Major James Stagg
    • (as Christopher Baker)
    George Shevtsov
    • General Charles DeGaulle
    Gregor McLennan
    • Captain Chapman
    Paul Gittins
    Paul Gittins
    • Major General Henry Miller
    Bruce Hopkins
    Bruce Hopkins
    • U.S. Colonel at Savoy
    Catherine Boniface
    Catherine Boniface
    • Woman at Savoy
    Mick Rose
    Mick Rose
    • King George
    Carole Seay
    • Queen Elizabeth
    • (as Carol Seay)
    Paul Barrett
    • Major Wiatt
      • Robert Harmon
      • Lionel Chetwynd
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      Tom Selleck, a non-smoker, temporarily took up the habit to play Dwight Eisenhower, who was, according to Selleck in the DVD's bonus feature, a four-pack-a-day smoker at the time. In 1949, Eisenhower was advised by his doctor and friend, Howard Snyder, to cut down on the cigarettes to one pack per day. Eisenhower initially did so, but after a few days, he decided that counting cigarettes was worse than smoking and quit permanently in 1949. He never smoked again.
    • Goofs
      In the scene where Eisenhower is holding the clip-board you can clearly see a laser scan bar code on the back.
    • Quotes

      King George VI: I am impressed by the detail, the comprehensiveness of your planning. The expected losses, the sheer carnage...

      Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: I also ache at that thought, your majesty. I remember my first trip to Europe as a young man, and I felt blessed to be here, to see it, to touch the origins of my own country that I love so dearly. I hoped one day all young Americans will have the same opportunity. Now hundreds of thousands will, along with Britons, and Canadians and European Allies fighting to return home. This kind of visit isn't what I had in mind. But if they do not offer the sacrifice in blood now, we will all pay dearly with added gallons later. So if some must die, it is in a worthy cause.

    • Connections
      Featured in The 56th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (2004)

    User reviews53

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    Surprisingly Solid Portrayal of General Eisenhower
    Before I saw this film I'd never have thought Tom Selleck's body type or acting skill were remotely apt for him to portray General Eisenhower. But Selleck pulls off the role admirably: this is the best playing of a role I've seen him manage. Kudos, Mr. Selleck - you made me forget you were Tom Selleck and had me, from the get-go, believing you were General Eisenhower.

    The film isn't about the war, the SHAEF staff, or even the invasion itself: it's about Ike's superb organizing and planning brain and his ability, unique in history, to manage what was, to that date, the most unwieldy and potentially fractious warfare coalition ever to have joined hands as allies. Selleck and writer Chetwyn tell quite well how Eisenhower dealt with the frustrations and burden of his critical command.

    Sure there are bits of created dialogue not to be found in the historical record and compressions of events and characters necessitated by the limits of cinematic storytelling, but on the whole this is a worthy film that achieves exactly what it set out to do: tell about Ike's grasp of the task set before him and his unparalleled aplomb in carrying it off.

    The only egregious gaffe in the writing was the line spoken by Group Captain Stagg in which he tells Ike and the senior SHAEF staff that the low pressure storm systems, which boded ill for the launch of the invasion, depended on how much they'd be propelled by the jetstream. In 1944 the jetstream had not been discovered. Some prewar and wartime high altitude fliers had experience of the jetstream's effects, but meteorology had not yet identified the jetstream by name, or learned of its constant presence as prime determinor of weather aloft or at ground level. (If you think me wrong about this, see the PBS 'NOVA' episode about the late-1940's crash of an Avro Lancastrian airliner in the Andes Mountains.)

    The only other objection I have to ALL films, to many otherwise comprehensive books, and to nearly all of the media reportage about the Normandy Invasion is the complete absence of mention of OPERATION NEPTUNE. NEPTUNE was the co-equal naval component of OVERLORD - which was the land component of the total SHAEF plan and operation. Without NEPTUNE there was, and could have been, no OVERLORD. Indeed the NEPTUNE planning gave SHAEF and Ike as many fits and starts and moments of intense anxiety as did any of the factors in the OVERLORD planning and execution. The two operations were, from the start of the invasion planning through its execution, akin to two hands being necessary to wash each other.

    A note to the IMDb reviewer who posted here that Field Marshall Montgomery was humorous and well-loved: this is simply not so. Most of Monty's associates - both senior and junior and both British and American - found him intolerant, rigid, insufferable, and the antithesis of humorous. It was also Monty's grave flaw that he prided himself as god's gift to generalship - a trait he shared with America's General Patton and which put Monty and Patton at loggerheads with each other throughout the war (Ike put up with much nonsense from both of them, and yet Ike's leadership managed to harness their talents to the task of achieving Allied victory). In his own plodding way Monty was a fine field commander, but he lacked completely what are today known as "people skills" - which lack disqualified him from being appointed supreme allied commander, which Churchill recognized long before it was necessary to appoint one. It was Ike alone among Allied commanders who had in spades all the people skills Monty and Patton lacked, as well as a near-perfect grasp of the leadership the Allied coalition, stacked as it was with prima donnas from every Allied nation, required in order for victory to be achieved over Nazi Germany.

    (By the way: let's all learn to spell "martinet," okay?)

    Quibble: Timothy Bottoms' work as Ike's able SHAEF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Walter Bedell Smith is too easygoing. General Smith suffered from painful stomach ulcers and those who knew him did not mistake his ulcerous irascibility! Bottoms misplays Smith as a soft-spoken foil or private confessor to Selleck's finely etched Ike. Perhaps this soft Smith is artistic license since the film is not about Smith but about Ike, but I still feel that Chetwyn and Bottoms might have tried to give General Smith and his ulcers and his legendary suffer-no-fools-whomsoever wrath their historical due.

    Most importantly 'Ike: Countdown to D-Day' succeeds in a way that most historical films fail: it gives the sense that none of what we now as history was preordained or a done-deal, that the events that Ike dealt with were not easy or inevitable - or glorious. There is here real drama given life by fine portrayals of characters facing up to and dealing with the gravest doubts and tasks.
    helpful•76
    7
    • Piafredux
    • Sep 17, 2004

    Details

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    • Release date
      • May 31, 2004 (United States)
      • United States
      • English
    • Also known as
    • Filming locations
      • Ardmore Airport, Ardmore, Auckland, New Zealand
    • Production companies
      • A+E Networks
      • Lionel Chetwynd Productions
      • Stephanie Germain Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • 1 hour 29 minutes
      • Color
      • Dolby Digital

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