Becoming more important as the years (wars) go by

Rating: 8/10 (3 April 2006)

'Kelly's Heroes' is an enduring showpiece of brilliant cynicism, with a healthy attitude toward war. I used to watch this film with my uncle, an army veteran of Normandy-all-the-way-to- Berlin, on-the-ground fighting. He would laugh and say that as goofy as it all was, the movie portrayed war as he experienced it; stupid, tragic, pointless and nasty.
I think it further remarkable that this film was made and released during a time when US casualties in Viet Nam sometimes exceeded five hundred dead per week. It took political courage to script, cast, produce, and distribute a movie so contemptuous in its treatment of military authority. In these times of foreign wars I wonder when a film will be made that confronts the questions of our war-policies as aptly as 'Kelly's Heroes' dismisses those of the 1960's. If it never happens it won't be too tragic, we still have this film to re-visit every few years.