Growing
up, I always associated Memorial Day Weekend with the war movie
marathons on TV that dotted TNT, AMC and Turner Classic Movies. I ate
them up -- still do -- as I watched as many as I could. They're still
some of my favorite movies, everything from The Dirty Dozen to The
Devil's Brigade and one of my favorites, 1970's Kelly's Heroes.
It's
fall 1944 and Allied forces are fighting their way across France, the
German army slowly being beaten back. At the forefront of the Allied
advance, a recon platoon, including Sgt. Big Joe (Telly Savalas), are worn down after months of fighting. One member of the platoon, Pvt. Kelly (Clint Eastwood),
stumbles across an interesting tidbit of information while
interrogating a German colonel. There is 14,000 bars of gold -- worth
$16 million -- in a bank just waiting to be plucked. The catch? The bank
is 30 miles behind German lines. Joe manages to convince both Big Joe
and the platoon to navigate through the lines and get their hands on the
gold. With a scrounger/supply sergeant, Crapgame (Don Rickles) and three Sherman tanks commanded by a hippie, Oddball (Donald Sutherland), along for the ride, Kelly and his motley crew of soldiers head out with a chance to net quite the payday.
What
an appropriately timed World War II movie. By the late 1960s, the tone
of war movies had changed from the big epics to the more cynical/comedic
variety, movies like MASH and Catch 22 among others. Enter Kelly's
Heroes, directed by Brian G. Hutton
(who also directed Where Eagles Dare), one of the most entertaining war
movies I've ever seen. Cynical with a dark sense of humor but also some
lighter moments -- courtesy of Sutherland's hippie tank commander --
with some great action, memorable score, and one of those perfect tough
guy casts. There's a reason it remains a fan favorite 40-plus years
later, and much of it because it blends all those things together so
effortlessly. Even an odd-sounding theme, Burning Bridges,
fits perfectly in an odd way. It is one of my favorite movies and
always will be, a classic war flick that I can sit down and watch
whenever it pops up on TV.
Can you ask for a better
lead quartet than Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles and Donald
Sutherland? Yeah, there has been casts with bigger star power, bigger
name recognition, but it's more than that here. This is four tough guys
having fun, on-screen chemistry that's just hard to describe. They all
get their chance in the spotlight. Eastwood is Eastwood, the impeccably
cool and man of few words hero. Savalas is a subtle scene-stealer as Big
Joe, the unofficial commander of the recon platoon (Hal Buckley
playing the clueless real commander Capt. Maitland), just trying to get
his men through the fighting unscathed and a somewhat unwilling
participant in the gold heist. Rickles is an out of left field choice to
join the cast, but it works, his Crapgame a smart-ass New Yorker always
with an eye for a profit. And then there's Sutherland as Oddball, the
tank commander always talking about positive waves (No Negative Waves,
man!), his Zen-like qualities, heading into battle with music blaring
and shells filled with paint waiting to be unleashed on the Germans.
As
a fan of guy's guys movies, it's simply hard to beat those four stars.
They make it look downright easy. Much of that chemistry and success
comes from the script written by Troy Kennedy-Martin,
a script with too many great one-liners to even mention. We see
familiar character archetypes, familiar war movie situations --
stumbling into a minefield, prepping for battle -- but there's a
different energy to the whole thing. It's that tone that blends the
drama, comedy and action so easily that makes it work. Carroll O'Connor
too is excellent in a part that lets him ham it up as General Colt, the
fiery division commander who's frustrated with the stagnant front
lines, getting a jolt of energy when Kelly's screwball force
unintentionally opens things up all along the front. There's something
to be said for a movie that is non-stop fun. It never gets heavy-handed
or obvious like some more message-oriented war movies.
When
the platoon looks back on a field where some of their fallen comrades
lay dead in the dirt, there's no words that need to be said. The looks
on the surviving men's faces says it all. Showing he's putting on
appearances for his men, Big Joe turns and raises his binoculars to
check one last time. The dynamic is there from the lead quartet right
down to the platoon, a group of recognizable character actors clearly
having some fun. The platoon includes Little Joe (Stuart Margolin), Big Joe's radioman, Cowboy (Jeff Morris) and Willard (Harry Dean Stanton), two drawling best buds, Gutowski (Dick Davalos), the sniper, Petuko (Perry Lopez), the smooth, goofy ladies man, Cpl. Job (Tom Troupe), Joe's second-in-command close friend, Fisher (Dick Balduzzi), the platoon genius, and Babra not Barbara (Gene Collins). Also, you can't forget Gavin MacLeod as Moriarty, Oddball's mechanical genius and constant provide of negative waves.
Also look for Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, Len Lesser, as Bellamy, an engineer Oddball ropes into helping the cause and Karl-Otto Alberty as a German tank commander who goes up against Kelly's forces and Oddball's tank trio.
With
a 146-minute running time, we've got plenty of chances for guys being
guys and plenty of action scenes. We get lots of action -- escaping a
minefield, a tank attack on a railway station, the platoon racing
through a German crossroad under mortar attack -- but the best is saved
for last as the platoon descends on Clermont, the town where the bank
and the gold are waiting. It's an extended sequence that runs about 35
minutes that doesn't rush into it. We get almost 10 minutes of the men
and the tanks sneaking into town while the German garrison slowly wakes
up, composer Lalo Schifrin's score driving the action. The entire movie was filmed in Czechoslovakia, the action finale filmed in the village of Vizinada. It's an extended sequence that is hard to beat.
Just
a great movie overall. Great cast, incredibly quotable, lots of action,
memorable soundtrack (Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of the score,
especially Tiger Tank),
and even a nod to Eastwood's spaghetti western background with a
three-way showdown with said tank. One of my all-time favorites and
hopefully you'll enjoy it just as much as I do.
Kelly's Heroes (1970): ****/****
Rewrite of August 2009 review
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