Off-List: Kelly's Heroes
The first
off-List movie of 1970 is “Kelly’s Heroes”, a movie which would never make it
to the List, but nevertheless a perfect antidote to the wave of very serious
and high-brow movies hitting me lately.
“Kelly’s
Heroes” is certainly neither serious, nor high-brow, but fun and enjoyable,
especially if you do not think too much about what you are watching.
During
World War II a unit of the American army gets wind of a fortune in gold lying
almost unguarded 30 miles behind the front. Kelly (Clint Eastwood), a demoted
lieutenant, forms a small task force to secretly sneak in to pilfer this gold.
Since the “insignificant” guard includes three of the dreaded Tiger tanks,
Kelly recruits Oddball and his band of three Sherman tanks. Oddball (Donald
Sutherland) is the only hippie in the American army and the source of much hilarity.
The movie
follows the set-up, the move in and the attack on the town with a lot of focus
on the banter and the shenanigans done to fool both the American brass and the
Germans. That is all very enjoyable, such as Oddball hoping that positive vibes
will ensure there will be a bridge for him. When it is blown up anyway, he
makes a phone call from a French café to a bridging unit and orders a bridge to
be delivered 30 miles behind the lines. This silliness is mixed with the usual fighting
and shooting you would expect in a war movie resulting in this odd combination
of a fun war movie.
The
combination should not work and it probably would not today, but it did back
then, at least until you start thinking about what you are watching. People die
like flies and the unit takes some substantial losses with little more than a
shrug and a “yeah, we a tough”. It takes a particular boyish gung-ho attitude
to reconciliate this with the hilarity, but somehow “Kelly’s Heroes fly over
that, as it does with all the historical inaccuracies. The battles around Nancy
was in the autumn, not at the height of summer, there does not seem to be a
Clermont near Nancy and the set in Yugoslavia carries only vague resemblance to
France. Not to mention a hippie in WWII…
Yet, who
cares, this is just fun and when Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald
Sutherland moves out, that is all that matters. A particular favorite is the scene
where the three of them walk down the street to face the Tiger tank in front of
the bank in Western style. This is totally high noon with a rip-off Morricone
score, which seems to be a reference to Clint Eastwood’s Sergio Leone characters.
It totally cracked me up.
Back in the
day movie critics tore it to pieces, but its boyish appeal has made it survive
the decades and it still occasionally pops up on television. That is a lot more
than can be said about most other movies from 1970.
Enjoyable
movies do not have to make a lot of sense or be particularly clever. Sometimes
some gung-ho tongue-in-cheek is enough to carry a film. And of course Clint
Eastwood. And some positive vibes.
I love this movie so much. It's silly and goofy and fun as all hell.
ReplyDeleteThere is a part of me who feel guilty for liking it, but I enjoy it too much to care
DeleteSo nice to have something fun! I go to bad Godzilla movies but this sounds perfect too.
ReplyDeleteBad Godzilla movies should do it too, but there is also something to say for good production value
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