This Hammer WWII b-movie was originally a stage-play, and with the contained setting and tons of dialog it's apparent..

But Stanley Baker turns in his greatest performance... a one-man show despite being surrounded by character-actors like faithful sergeant Gordon Jackson countered by idealistic reporter Leo McKern and priest Guy Rolfe, driving the central moral-quandary plot-line...

Beginning with their troop of disheveled British soldiers, lost and trudging through the Burmese jungle, happening upon a two-hut village where Baker's no-nonsense captain figures he MUST scare an informer by killing two elderly locals...

The best scenes occur during this first half when Baker's lethal, cold-blooded methods start becoming more clear and, because of the vital information gained, somewhat logical, and he never wavers to the ethical humanity in a village foreshadowing future Vietnam films (and their tropes) about murderous white soldiers...

These include Brian De Palma's CASUALTIES OF WAR and Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning PLATOON, still paling to this low budget, obscure gem mostly thanks to Stanley Baker...

Keeping up the same stubborn, determined intensity when the Japanese, led by an English-speaking, philosophizing Philip Ahn, turns the tables, and the adaptation becomes even more stagey and yet with tight, edgy suspense by Val Guest, one of Hammer's best directors, YESTERDAY'S ENEMY keeps the audience as locked-in as its unflappable leading man.

This is war at its very worst, and it's difficult to imagine any nastier situation. A small unit is surrounded by any number of Japanese in the Burmese jungle and search desperately for a way out. The only way seems to shoot their way out, which fails a number of times. But they find a small village, where they manage to rout a small Japanese unit with a high officer on top, who is killed but leaves behind some important information by an unintelligible map, which they try to decipher by the help of the one man in the village who knows English but by most controversial means of extortion by making him witness executions. It's war, there are no rules and anything is allowed, and as Albert Lieven said in a previously reveiwed film ("Conspiracy of Hearts" 1960), "If there was any reason in an army at all, it would never make war." Here they make war and suffer the consequences.

The film is impressingly well made, the dialog is on top all the way, and the fateful story gives much reason for afterthought. This is the hopeless way in which all wars work, and if you are in it you just can't escape it but have to get through until the end. Stanley Baker, Gordon Jackson, Leo McKern, Guy Rolfe and others are all perfect in their acting, - but it certainly will take some time before you wish to see this film over again. Its unforgettable experience will haunt you.