Orders to Kill is a 1958 British wartime drama film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Paul Massie, Eddie Albert and Irene Worth.

Gene Summers, a young American bombardier, is selected by Major Kimball to go on a mission to Nazi-occupied Paris and kill a man believed to be a double agent working in the French Resistance.

MacMahon, however, has misgivings about Summers' boyish enthusiasm, and fears that his youth and inexperience might jeopardise the mission.

Arriving in France, Summers meets his Resistance contact, Léonie, a dressmaker whose clients include the girlfriend of a high-ranking German officer.

She rebukes him sharply for his folly and reminds him that he would not have been given his orders without reason, and then furiously upbraids him after he reacts to her tirade by inadvertently revealing details of his war service.

Returning to Lafitte's office, he first cracks a blunt object over the man's head, but the blow merely stuns him.

The stricken Lafitte turns over to look directly up into the eyes of the young man, and utters a single word: "Why?"

[7] The silent movie actress Lillian Gish has a cameo as the pilot's mother Producer Tony Havelock-Allan said the film was brought to him by Anthony Asquith with whom he had just collaborated.

...The playing of a strangely assorted cast, guided by Asquith's close direction, is generally firm and detailed.

Although clearly inexperienced, Paul Massie successfully achieves the character's change from the light-hearted banter of the beginning to the painful internal struggle of the latter half; and Eddie Albert is quietly convincing as his commanding officer and mentor.

Leslie French's portrait of the suspected traitor is most subtly observed, as is James Robertson Justice's Naval Commander.