Proper Motivation

Rating: 8/10 (25 May 2009)

Kelly's Heroes is a film that puts forth the notion that with proper motivation, soldiers will perform all kinds of heroic deeds in battle. Of course I don't think that West Point or any of the other military academies had the kind of motivation that this film gives Clint Eastwood and the collection of GIs he assembles for a caper.
Clint Eastwood as Private Joe Kelly interrogates a captured German Colonel and learns of a stash of gold bullion in the town of Clermont which is behind enemy lines and a place that General Carroll O'Connor is anxious to capture. Sixteen million dollars in bullion and as proof Eastwood is given a bar of it as a sample by the inebriated Colonel.
As the war seems to be at a stall, Eastwood decides to grab the gold for himself and some trusted confederates. I don't think he thought this thing through, the problem of hiding it and fencing it assuming you capture it is not really discussed. And of course the stuff is behind the enemy lines.
But where O'Connor can't move, Eastwood finds a way because he's motivated. His crew also gets larger and larger and pretty soon there won't be enough to share.
Kelly's Heroes is an interesting war comedy/drama with a real twist for an ending that I won't even give a hint of. Director Brian Hutton assembled a nice cast of familiar and soon to be familiar names to support Clint. My favorite is Donald Sutherland as the Sherman tank commander nicknamed Oddball and it's an apt moniker. Sutherland is a hippie born 20 years too soon, but definitely a character who would have been appreciated by the film audiences of the Seventies.
Such favorites as Don Rickles and Telly Savalas and Stuart Margolin are all in on Eastwood's caper. This is one fun movie.
But an odd choice for a Memorial Day showing celebrating the fighting spirit of the American soldiers who died in battle on TCM.