Drinking wine, eating cheese, and catching some rays, you know?

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2008)

Director Brian Hutton was responsible for two classic action movies, "Where Eagles Dare", released in 1968, and "Kelly's Heroes", released in 1970. Both were old fashioned adventure movies, both were set in WW2, both filtered a past conflict through a Vietnam Era prism and both were packed to the brim with wild chases, humour, tension and lots of beautiful scenery.
"Kelly's Heroes" was originally intended as an anti-war satire, but was severely reedited by studios until it resembled a more straightforward action movie. Made the same year as "MASH" (which also featured Donald Sutherland as a hippie), Eastwood and Hutton envisioned the film as an anarchic satire, Vietnam era anti establishment spread thickly across the more prim and proper battlefields of World War 2.
"Heroes'" final cut retains some of this irreverence, but most of its playful cynicism now resides solely in Oddball (played by Donald Sutherland), a tank driving hippie who spouts such lines as "Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves, baby?" and "Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?". He's a fun character (and a nice contrast to Eastwood's stoic persona), who helps imbue Hutton's film with some "flower power" playfulness.
Yet despite its goofy plot (our heroes fight their way across France in an attempt to rob a German bank) and marijuana fuelled soundtrack, Hutton also bathes his film in lots of detail. A siege on a town plays out like the end of "Saving Private Ryan", and several skirmishes are filled with tension. "Kelly's Heroes" may be a counterculture comedy, but it nevertheless works tremendously well as a conventional war movie.
Arguably better than "Kelly's Heroes" - though perhaps less interesting - is "Where Eagles Dare", an epic adventure movie based on an Alistair Mclean's novel. Filmed in Austria, the film looks great, filled with snow capped mountains, perilous cable carts, a cool German castle and even a babe called Heidi. Hutton's direction would prove hugely influential, many of his scenes lifted by Tarantino and George Lucas, and several of his sequences re-staged as levels in modern video games.
Of course the film will seem a bit dated to modern audiences weened on fast edits, taunt action and CGI. Hutton's rear projection work in particular now stands out like a sore thumb. But Clint Eastwood is always cool, and those who like casual violence will find several scenes in which Clint mows down stairwells full of Germans to be shockingly laid back. Clint isn't just unphased when dishing out violence, he's positively relaxed.
The 1960s and early 1970s saw a number of "boys own" adventure movies being released ("Dirty Dozen", "Guns of Navarone", "The Great Escape" etc). Films like these used war, not to express any moral or patriotic sentiment, but as vehicles for action, aimed primarily at the young 'modern' audiences of the Vietnam era. These films may have done nothing but dished out casual violence and reduced WW2 to a series of heroic adventures, (Huston did this stuff right with "The Man Who Would Be King"), but nevertheless surpassed the next wave (Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc) of similar flicks because they, arguably, retained a certain adult sensibility. A sensibility that would be completely eroded come the 1980s.
8/10 - See Pontecorvo's "Burn!".