as much fun as MASH, with only a few glaring problems

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2009)

Kelly's Heroes is a fantastic war/heist/buddy movie for about 90% of its running time. It's predates Three Kings by thirty years as a yarn about a group of soldiers out to get a whole crap-load of gold bars (sixteen million to be exact), and it gives us a group of characters we can have fun with and, more or less, care about in their quest for the gold. It's also one of those "guy" movies where there is not much sign of the opposite sex and us dudes get to hang out with Clint, Don Rickles, Telly Savalas, and a very bizarre but perfectly entertaining Donald Sutherland. And if you need to get pumped up for a new war movie coming out (i.e. Inglorious Basterds) it does just the trick.
We follow our group of 'heroes' who are able to slip by their superiors to go after gold locked up in enemy territory. If it doesn't have the same satirical impact of Three Kings it at least has an abundance of tough, brawny action scenes and even a fun knock at General Patton with Carrol O'Connor's character. We don't get the deepest insight into Americans or Germans during WW2, but we don't need it really anyway. It sometimes just makes for an intriguing viewing trying to figure out where Sutherland is at: he's a dead-on hippie, but without the same subterfuge that one saw in MASH... and yet, arguably perhaps, I was much more responsive to him here than with his fun-but-smug character in Altman's comedy. He keeps saying lines like "don't make bad waves!" and is only missing tie-dye and a joint to fulfill the package. Without a real good reason perhaps except on a visceral level, I would recommend the film if only to check out Sutherland here.
But there's other good things about Kelly's Heroes. Clint is Clint, which makes for some fun exchanges, especially with some of the more testy soldiers in the group or at a moment of a pinch, and Savalas makes some really good ground as one of those hard-but-fair army unit leaders who we can sympathize with when he has his doubts (the most doubtful of all) that the heist can actually work. And Don Rickles shows how he was as much good as an actor, when properly used, as a classic-snarky comedian. Other little treats include seeing Harry Dean Stanton crooning on the harmonica, the climax of the movie turning at a distinct point into a western (and, as an influence mayhap, Tarantinian), and that theme song "Burning Bridges" being catchy and hard-charging as a driving force for the characters.
My only big gripes were the beginning and end scenes, as they dragged and didn't add a whole lot to the story. It's a decent try, at the start, to establish the hectic and frenetic mood of nighttime combat, but it obstructs what's more interesting with Kelly and the drunk German. Also, the ending goes on at least five minutes too long, as we see quick cut-aways of the soldiers' reactions to seeing the gold with images of a liberation celebration in the streets, which would have been sublime, but there's more movie that goes on after this point that doesn't need it. But overall, Kelly's Heroes is a lot of fun, with convincing action and direction and writing.