THE HILL may not have the name recognition as Lumet’s SERPICO, but it packs the same anti-establishment wallop that Lumet is so adept at delivering. Here, the rotten system is the British Army. In a North African military detention center during World War II, five British soldiers (including Bond-era Sean Connery) who have been convicted of a litany of infractions—going AWOL, getting drunk, refusing orders—are subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by the sadistic Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry). As the prisoners struggle to maintain their dignity and sanity in the face of overwhelming oppression, THE HILL becomes a powerful meditation on masculinity and the dynamics of power in the military. Of his simple but effective film Lumet noted, “It’s all character—a group of men, prisoners and jailers alike, driven by the same motive force: fear."