Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Excellent but underrated film

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

What a fantastic film. Just watched it today for the first time and am still thinking about it! It captivated me right from the start. It was nice to watch a film from that era which concentrated on the characters lives instead of the war. The chemistry between William Devane and Vanessa Redgrave was wonderful to watch. He is such a watchable actor in everything he does. Richard Gere was as always very charming and played the role with ease. His "love interest" Jean was also very charming and mastered the English accent very well for an American. Her family life gave us an insight into what was expected of young women back then. The locations were beautifully shot and transported me back in time. I could not fault anything about this film and can't wait to watch it again.

I remember being disappointed by "Yanks" when it was first released in 1979. Now I have seen it again nearly 35 years later, and my opinion has not changed.First, the positive news. The staging, editing, and photography are top notch, with a keen eye for period detail. Some of the acting is quite good too, especially Lisa Eichhorn (as Jean Moreton) and Tony Melody (as her dad, Jim Moreton).But the negatives dominate. The script (by Colin Wellan and Walter Bernstein) is inferior in every way, with a predictable story and far too many stereotypes for my liking. Most of the Americans are loudmouthed braggarts, and I was just waiting for the inevitable scenes of racial bigotry that seem to infest all such tales of Yanks in Britain. It should have had no part in this story. Indeed, if the script had stuck to a love triangle among Jean, Matt, and Ken, all would have been much better -- instead of trying to tackle the whole of WWII in a single bite.Dialogue is laughably clichéd throughout, and I cannot understand why Richard Gere is considered to be a capable actor. Neither is William Devane much good here. Score big points for the superiority of British acting over the Americans. Worst of all, and a lethal weakness, I sensed absolutely no chemistry whatsoever between Mr. Gere and Ms. Eichhorn. How anyone could fail to fall madly in love with Lisa Eichhorn, in person or on screen, is beyond me, but Gere somehow managed to do it. What a dud performance. Too bad because his character could have been rather likable. Instead, all he ever talked about was Arizona, and I could not see any reason for Jean to have become interested in him.Don't waste your time on "Yanks" unless you want to enjoy a nice performance by the sweet, lovely Lisa Eichhorn. I wish the movie could have been about Jean and Ken (Derek Thompson). Now, that would have been worth watching -- though of course the title would have to be changed!

I saw this film in a theater upon its' release and found it to be enjoyable but I didn't like Richard Gere at the time. Much later, I saw him in 'Chicago' and realized that he was a true talent.When I watched the film on TV recently I was absorbed with Lisa Eichhorn (yes, 2 h's). I actually thought she was the most innocent looking and pretty girl on earth at the time the movie was filmed (she's still cute). I liken her to Cathy O'Donnell in 'The Best Years of Our Lives,' a post-WWII film and in my top ten of all time favorite movies. I learned that Lisa faked a British accent so well that she was signed for the role of Jean. Actually, Lisa was born and raised in New York State. When the producers found out she was American, they still put her in the role.

In 1979 the nostalgia about the second world war was slightly displaced but could easily be explained by the defeat in Vietnam in 1975 and all the films about the horror this war in Vietnam was. Let's compensate slightly and enjoy WW2 when the Yanks were welcomed (kind of) in Europe and expected to give a good spanking to the Germans, if not the Nazis, or vice versa. But there is no Kwai river in Europe. So let us make it sentimental and evoke the meeting of the Yanks with their distant British cousins in England getting ready for the second front and then the third. So the whole film is given some life with its being centered on the relation between one man from Arizona and one girl from the small city where the Yanks are camping. Possible and impossible passion at the same time, possible in the mind and impossible in the body because of the immense chasm between the two worlds, the two civilizations. It is a little pathetic, and yet probably true. A culture that says the girl of another man is sacred and a woman from another world has to be tamed and introduced with time and in time, not taken and used for a short while and forgotten when departure day arrives. You add to that the difficult relation between some white GIs and the black GIs, plus the impossibility for the other white GIs who are not openly hostile to the black GIs, hence who are not openly racist, to prevent or stop the racist provocation and then fight. Does it make a good film? It would have been good in the 50s. But four years after the defeat in Vietnam it is slightly too romantic and even simplistic to really erase the humiliation of 1975. The film 30 years later becomes slightly too sweet to be digestible. For having lived up to 1965 with GIs in my city and having seen their disruptive presence every Sunday along the embankments of the harbor, alcohol, prostitution, and a few other things of the type, I can testify it was probably a lot more drastic and sinister in England, in war time, waiting for the front, knowing that they may never come back from it. The film then appears idyllic, and in a way weak.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID