[3] The title of the film is a reference to the motto of the Special Air Service: "Who Dares Wins".During the Second World War, Lieutenant Graham is sent on a mission to destroy two Italian airfields on Rhodes that may threaten Egypt.

Bogarde recalled Lewis Milestone insisting on the cast wearing actual 90 pound/40 kilogram backpacks as he felt actors could not convincingly act as if they were carrying a large amount of weight.

On the adventure story level, the film seems too often vague and implausible in detail – in the sequence of the attack on the airfield, for instance, or the final episode of the rescue by submarine.

Here the emphasis is placed on the hostility between Graham, uncertain of himself but prepared to take risks "for the kick", and Corcoran, established as an "intellectual" by the fact that he reads poetry aloud.

Dirk Bogarde and Denholm Elliott play these parts without much conviction, and the latter's hysterical outburst on the beach strikes a singularly false note; a superficial and indecisive script seems largely to blame. ...

Lewis Milestone has always been one of the more uneven of the major Hollywood directors, and They Who Dare indicates, as other films have done, the extent to which he depends on a strong and well-constructed script.

Ordered to knock out a couple of airfields, Dirk Bogarde and Denholm Elliott spend as much time squabbling as they do confronting the enemy.