Kelly's Heroes
Feb. 14th, 2021 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calzephyrWe're now into the "Men of Action" part of the Clint Eastwood collection and another movie I probably wouldn't have been too interested in watching. Eastwood gets top billing in this interesting movie about a World War Two bank heist that may have been based on reality.
The movie signals right away that this isn't an ordinary war movie by the juxtaposition of an action sequence with the bright and cheerful theme song, "Burning Bridges":
It really took us by surprise! The song plays again at the end as the heroes leave with a truck load of gold. The caper is the brainchild of Kelly, a former lieutenant, who discovers that a stash of Nazi gold is hidden in a town. He works out a plan and convinces his colleagues to join him and go AWOL during their break to get the gold. There's definitely a weird and anti-establishment streak in this movie. There's too much comedy to make it a straight up war film like Where Eagles Dare but not enough of it to be completely obvious like Catch-22. The absurdities of war are well shown as the heroes encounter friendly fire and Kelly's captain steals a yacht. Ranting and raving two star General Colt would be perfectly at home in Dr. Strangelove. There's even an homage to Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns with soundalike music.
However, the movie couldn't quite decide if it was a movie or an extended TV episode. It might have been the casting which to viewers of a certain age, will be familiar. Carroll O'Connor, Gavin Macleod, Don Rickles and Telly Savalas along with other character actors round out the cast. Donald Sutherland plays Oddball, the proto-hippie leader of a tank corp who waxes on in a Yogi Bear-like voice about positive waves. Kelly's disgust at the undisciplined and free-spirited tank corp camp is pretty real--no acting there!
Now, this movie is long and I lost a bit of interest during the French town scene to read IMDb. It's 144 minutes and that's after about 20 minutes was cut from the film. The pacing could have been picked up here and there and today it would have moved along quite swiftly. The ending is strange--of course they get the gold--but it seems oddly out of place, which almost makes it feel like the ending is the fever dream of someone's dying brain or that the whole movie is someone's head canon to escape the drudgery of war.
The movie signals right away that this isn't an ordinary war movie by the juxtaposition of an action sequence with the bright and cheerful theme song, "Burning Bridges":
It really took us by surprise! The song plays again at the end as the heroes leave with a truck load of gold. The caper is the brainchild of Kelly, a former lieutenant, who discovers that a stash of Nazi gold is hidden in a town. He works out a plan and convinces his colleagues to join him and go AWOL during their break to get the gold. There's definitely a weird and anti-establishment streak in this movie. There's too much comedy to make it a straight up war film like Where Eagles Dare but not enough of it to be completely obvious like Catch-22. The absurdities of war are well shown as the heroes encounter friendly fire and Kelly's captain steals a yacht. Ranting and raving two star General Colt would be perfectly at home in Dr. Strangelove. There's even an homage to Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns with soundalike music.
However, the movie couldn't quite decide if it was a movie or an extended TV episode. It might have been the casting which to viewers of a certain age, will be familiar. Carroll O'Connor, Gavin Macleod, Don Rickles and Telly Savalas along with other character actors round out the cast. Donald Sutherland plays Oddball, the proto-hippie leader of a tank corp who waxes on in a Yogi Bear-like voice about positive waves. Kelly's disgust at the undisciplined and free-spirited tank corp camp is pretty real--no acting there!
Now, this movie is long and I lost a bit of interest during the French town scene to read IMDb. It's 144 minutes and that's after about 20 minutes was cut from the film. The pacing could have been picked up here and there and today it would have moved along quite swiftly. The ending is strange--of course they get the gold--but it seems oddly out of place, which almost makes it feel like the ending is the fever dream of someone's dying brain or that the whole movie is someone's head canon to escape the drudgery of war.
