In World War II Africa, there stands an english POW camp, filled with a lot of unhappy, frustrated men. The Italian commanding officer (Tony Lo Bianco) keep himself pretty busy between his demoralized soldiers and one prisonner in particular (Vincent Spano) who insists on beating feet every time the english guards look the other way.
  The one exciting thing to do in this place is admiring the repeated attempts and failures of english camp warden Farrell (Ben Cross) at climbing to the top of neighbouring Mount Kenya.
  This gives the Italian officer a brilliant idea : What if a group of his soldiers escaped and scaled that reluctant peak to plant an Italian flag at the top, mmmmh? Surely, that would improve the morale of the troops and give them back their lost self-respect. As you can imagine, to do that, he needs to engage the helps of a crackerjack climber, and, that'd be Distassi, the prisonner with the pissy attitude.
  To complicate things, during one of his many escapes, Distassi has met Farrell's beautiful lady friend (Rachel Ward). They liked eachother, one thing led to another... Yada, yada, yada. Anyway, now Farrell really and truly hates him.
  After sundry adventures, the escapes occurs, followed by the climb, with Farrell in pursuit, officially, to return the prisonners. Privatly, we feel that if he really had to, he would not mind doing something to Distassi disallowed by the Geneva convention.
  Normally, I am not a real big fan of Ben Cross, but he does quite well, here. His rage and frustration tightly contained under a veneer of british control and military discipline. He seems like a man about to blow a gasket and Distassi's quiet insolence is just what he doesn't need.
  Tony Lo Bianco is a delight, as usual. He always seem very natural when he plays a simple, kind man. He has compassion for the pain felt by his soldiers; he understand that it stems less from their emprisonnement than from the loss of their sense of themselves. Shiftless and bored, vaguely relieved that, for them, the war is over, they have little better to do than bickering with the german prisonners and stay out of trouble with the english guards.
  Vincent Spano does a great turn in his role as Distassi. At times rankling, and other times amusing, he is a loner, problem child type who dedicates his life in captivity to annoying as many people as possible , afterward, taking in strides the painful consequences of his behaviour.
  Unlike the other POWs, he is still at war against the english, and is not too crazy about the rest of humanity either, especially his own countrymen for whom he feels little but disdain. He loves his country passionatly but hates the ideologies that led to this war that disrupted his peaceful life in Italy.
  Despite their mutual dislike, him and Farrell are very similar : They are two men on a mission to do something extraordinary to transcend the ugliness and boredom of their present condition. Farrell wants glory, Distassi longs for freedom; both, they seek their own brand of enlightenment.
  Even though we feel sympathy for Distassi's sense of purpose, he has a chip on his shoulder, at first, that prevents him from being very likeable. The compassion he lacks, he is about to learn it from the majestic beauty of the mountain and his struggle to conquer it. As he goes into himself using all his ressources for the climb, as the air becomes thinner, a change occurs in him. He leaves behind the anger and bitterness of the war, the defeat , the emprisonnement; and gives in to the perfection of the moment, he comes to a point where he is ready to accept his belonging to the society of man and the end of his climb is an act of pure joy.
   When he reaches the summit, his expression, wonder, sudden understanding is extraordinary and touching.
   He will return to the camp a very different man.