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#282 - Kelly's Heroes
Brian G. Hutton, 1970
During the Allies' campaign against the Germans in World War II, an American soldier learns of a secret stash of Nazi gold and immediately puts together a team of men in order to retrieve it.
It'd be good to see if I could get through this review without referencing a certain other WWII movie about men going on a secret mission that I've watched recently, but it's hard not to when you've even got Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland popping up in this one. Even so, Kelly's Heroes is a pretty dull film. Sure, it's got plenty of gun battles and explosions as would befit such a lightweight war movie, but those do gloss over how the core of the film is extremely hollow. Ostensibly a comedy due to its wacky cast of characters, there's barely any mirth to be had here - there's the odd-couple tension between Savalas and Clint Eastwood, who plays a pretty typical Eastwood character in his role as the titular soldier. I also remember Sutherland being an especially kooky tank commander, but that's more or less all I can remember about the comic element.
The movie plods along for two hours, throws in action when it starts to drag more than normal, fails to establish any memorable camarderie between the supposed heroes of the title, and basically fails to distinguish itself in any meaningful way from a certain other way. Sure, it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, but that just means that I don't take it seriously either, not even as a basic old-school action movie with comic elements thrown in so people aren't supposed to think it's trying to be the exact same movie as The Dirty Dozen (which wasn't exactly the highest art in the first place either). All in all, it is quite a disinteresting and disappointing feature.
Brian G. Hutton, 1970
During the Allies' campaign against the Germans in World War II, an American soldier learns of a secret stash of Nazi gold and immediately puts together a team of men in order to retrieve it.
It'd be good to see if I could get through this review without referencing a certain other WWII movie about men going on a secret mission that I've watched recently, but it's hard not to when you've even got Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland popping up in this one. Even so, Kelly's Heroes is a pretty dull film. Sure, it's got plenty of gun battles and explosions as would befit such a lightweight war movie, but those do gloss over how the core of the film is extremely hollow. Ostensibly a comedy due to its wacky cast of characters, there's barely any mirth to be had here - there's the odd-couple tension between Savalas and Clint Eastwood, who plays a pretty typical Eastwood character in his role as the titular soldier. I also remember Sutherland being an especially kooky tank commander, but that's more or less all I can remember about the comic element.
The movie plods along for two hours, throws in action when it starts to drag more than normal, fails to establish any memorable camarderie between the supposed heroes of the title, and basically fails to distinguish itself in any meaningful way from a certain other way. Sure, it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously, but that just means that I don't take it seriously either, not even as a basic old-school action movie with comic elements thrown in so people aren't supposed to think it's trying to be the exact same movie as The Dirty Dozen (which wasn't exactly the highest art in the first place either). All in all, it is quite a disinteresting and disappointing feature.