Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Overlooked WWII cult classic

This is one of my favorite WWII movies of all time. Normally, I really don't like to watch movies more than once or twice, but this one I can watch over and over again. I read a critic review of this movie several years back and he said it was just a poor rehash of "The Dirty Dozen". Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is what you would consider a "Black Comedy". It has both sublime and hilarious comedic performances interwoven with pathos, suspense and hard-hitting WWII action. It has a great ensemble cast featuring Donald Sutherland (Oddball), Clint Eastwood (Kelly), Telly Savalas (Big Joe), Don Rickles (Crapgame), Carroll O'Conner (General Colt) and Gavin McLeod (Moriarity) among others like Harry Dean Stanton (Willard) and Jeff Morris (Cowboy).

Kelly stumbles upon a German officer not too long after D-Day with top secret information about a Nazi held bank with 16 million dollars worth of gold. The only problem is, it's 30 miles behind enemy lines! He assembles a renegade outfit to go get it, recruiting a crazy cast of characters along the way. Donald Sutherland gives one of his great performances as Oddball, the burnout tank commander to provide the heavy firepower. He's the world's first hippie who encourages everyone they can accomplish anything they want as long as they think "positive thoughts". Crapgame is the Brooklyn born hustler that can wrangle all the supplies as long as he gets his cut. Big Joe is the barely willing hard bitten Sergeant who provides his men and keeps things down to earth. Kelly is the no-nonsense disaffected lieutenant that orchestrates the whole plan and keeps them on track.
Carroll O'Conner gives a great over the top performance as General Colt who is frustrated at the lack of progress on the front line. When he hears over the radio the breakthrough the heroes are making, he thinks they are the real deal and wants to go give them all a medal!

I think this was one of the best ensemble casting jobs I have seen. Every major character is fully realized and interacts with each other perfectly. The writing was excellent and the pacing is great. The plot is fairly straightforward but involving. Plus it has a very good ending. The music gives you a seventies feel but feels oddly appropriate. If you want some memorable one-liners, this movie is chock full of them. Asked why Oddball isn't helping his men fix the tank, "Hey man, I just drive em, I don't what makes em work!".

Along the way, you have short but memorable appearances such as Mulligan, the artillery officer who can't shoot straight. I love Don Rickles in this movie, the role seems tailor made for him. I love the scene where he is talking to Big Joe's sidekick soldier Babra (who Joe keeps calling Barbara) about writing home to his mother. It has some of the worst moments of war as well. The hell of caring for a buddy who is there one moment and lost forever the next. If you to want have the guys (and maybe gals) over for a "guys night at the movies", this is the one for you.

December 17, 2008

An Awful Eastwood Bomb!

Stay away from this awful movie. although Eastwood's done a lot of great work in his 40 + years of filmaking, this is one movie to pass up. Donald Sutherland's hippie character is a complete waste, while Carroll O'Conner's character is simply a caricature of an inept army general. Eastwood does his wooden impression of a concerned soldier. Sadly, Savals and Rickles are the best actors in the whole movie. Poor attention to detail throughout: no one gets dirty or has a five o'clock shadow, despite marching through the French countryside for days. Also, after being strafed by an American plane, the soldiers call it the "air force" (which didn't exist until after the war) instread of "air corps." No battle tactics displayed by the German soldiers who die by the score. Not one of them takes any cover or concealment. And were the Germans so deaf, dumb, and blind as to not see the Americans creeping up on them or their tank rumbling through town? The final showdown between the German tank driver and the Americans (Eastwood, Savalas, Sutherland) is a poor joke, modeled on the man-with-no-name shootout scenes. They'd been trying to kill each other for an hour and suddenly they and the German hatch a plot together to blow open the bank's doors. Not even funny or in the least bit interesting. JUST AWFUL! Stay away from it December 5, 2008

One of my favs!

Received quickly and in very good condition. One of my most fav movies ever! November 19, 2008

Vietnam Redux-But Without Bitterness

In KELLY'S HEROES, director Brian Hutton succeeds in reviving an earlier DIRTY DOZEN, and combines it with a Vietnam War style flair of left-wing anti-militarism that nevertheless carries the audience from start to finish. Clint Eastwood is cast in a role well-suited to his earlier penchant for playing the bounty hunter. Here he has learned of the existence of sixteen million dollars of gold in a German occupied French bank. He allies himself with a motley horde of names well-known to credit readers of the late 1960s: Telly Savalas as the loudmouthed sergeant, Carrol O'Oconnor as the equally loudmouthed cartoonish general, Donald Southerland as the hippiesh bearded tank commander, and Gavin MacLeod as the fumbling mechanic.

Much of the film is an uneasy mixture of a standard shoot-em-up war film of tanks, screaming strafing aircraft, and bloody ambushes with a comedic subtext of mercenary soldiers who view the war as a source of profit. Casualties on both sides are vastly different. Germans get blown away by the hundreds yet only two GIs die. This differential in mortality is needed to keep the film on track as a sometimes funny anti-war film that undoubtedly seemed hilarious in a Vietnam obsessed America of 1970 and only somewhat less humorous in an equally Iraq obsessed America of 2008. One does not question the many logical gaps involved in Eastwood's leadership of his mercenaries without his superiors finding out. Indeed, with the buffoonish Carrol O'Connor as the commanding general, one simply accepts that foolishness rather than professionalism is the only requisite for command. Donald Southerland is truly amusing in the same way that he later showed in MASH, but my thinking is that the real impact of KELLY'S HEROES lies not in amusing an audience with the antics of money grubbing soldiers but rather in convincing an already anti-war America that all wars in all times are no different from the one that Eastwood, Savalas, and their cohorts found so immensely profitable. May 24, 2008

Classic movie

I bought this movie for my dad as a gift. He said he couldn't find it anywhere! So, I knew where to go! Amazon has everything! He was so excited! It is one of his favorite movies. I remember watching it with him before. It is an excellent and very funny movie! (and I'm not big on war movies!) May 5, 2008

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