Who Dares Wins (1982) on Netflix

R19822h 5mAction Thriller

Peter Skellen, a captain in the SAS, is dismissed for brutality. The dismissal is a front so he can infiltrate the People's Lobby, which is preparing to seize American dignitaries.

Netflix3.2/5
IMDb6.4/104,255 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

Trailer

Plot summary

In London, a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march is broken up when a protester is killed. The dead man was an intelligence officer who had gone undercover among radicals; the security services conclude that extremists have joined the disarmament movement and are preparing an armed operation. The SAS commander, Colonel J. Hadley, proposes a different approach. Captain Peter Skellen is removed from the regiment after being found torturing two visiting officers, a disgrace staged so he can offer himself to the radicals. His contact Ryan points him toward Frankie Leith and Rod Walker, who lead a group called the People's Lobby. Skellen introduces himself to Leith in a bar, and she brings him into the organization and gives him work as a security consultant.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Who Dares Wins (1982)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Euan Lloyd lived half a mile from the Iranian Embassy in London, visited it repeatedly during the four-day siege and saw the SAS storming of 5 May 1980 in person; that same evening he telephoned his lawyer in New York to register five titles, one of them SAS: Who Dares Wins.
When it came time to shoot the assault on the U.S. Ambassador's residence the crew had helicopters and stuntmen ready, but the SAS offered to do the scene instead, and Sharp accepted because he thought the look they gave could not be replicated by the crew.
Lloyd commissioned a treatment from his friend George Markstein, a writer and former intelligence officer; to make the film more relevant to American audiences they changed the embassy's nationality from Iranian to American and swapped the real siege's Iranian separatists for anti-nuclear extremists.
On one of his visits to Stirling Lines, Sharp met a Fijian trooper who had been caught up in his descent during the Iranian embassy assault and whose uniform caught fire from the explosives used for the forced entry; Sharp had a similar scene inserted.
Ronald Reagan and his advisers watched the film at Camp David and reportedly enjoyed it; on the recommendation of Alexander Haig, Reagan's former Secretary of State and a new MGM/UA board member, the studio bought it for U.S. distribution and retitled it The Final Option.
The screenplay came together in relay: George Markstein wrote an initial synopsis, James Follett turned it into the novel The Tiptoe Boys in 30 days, and each chapter was posted as it was finished to Reginald Rose in Los Angeles, who wrote the final screenplay.