Sutherland Is The Saving Grace

Rating: 6/10 (4 October 2005)

Watching KELLY'S HEROES is a deeply irritating experience if you go in with the mindset that it's a war movie . Look at the cast for example where we see forty something actors playing front line combat troops , it's almost as bad as the John Wayne laugh fest THE GREEN BERETS and despite the screenplay being written by Briton Troy Kennedy Martin we have to endure these ridiculous scenes where a handful of American soldiers wipe out wave upon wave of German troops . Am I allowed to mention that in France during WW2 for every German soldier killed by a GI in combat the Germans killed two Americans ?
You should of course view KELLY'S HEROES as a cross genre movie , a heist movie set against the backdrop of the second world war that doesn't take itself too seriously . Even so it would have been a fairly unmemorable movie experience if it didn't feature Donald Sutherland in the role of Sgt Oddball . The character is totally anachronistic , he's some type of hippy whose hair and beard goes against US Army regulations and speaks about strange concepts that no one would have any inkling of in 1944 but that's the whole point of his character and he's played superbly by Sutherland in one of his best roles and who steals absolutely steals every single scene he appears in . Without risking any type of litigation the trivia section of this page mentions that Mr Sutherland was " seriously ill " while making this . I wonder if he was taking any herbal medicine at the time ! This is a movie that is saved by one single performance , that of Sutherland's
I doubt if it's supposed to be an allegory on Vietnam despite the hippy subtext and the friendly fire incidents unlike say ULZANA'S RAID , CHATO'S LAND and TOO LATE THE HERO . Imagine how differently this would have been received if it was set in 1969 Vietnam where an American platoon team up with the NVA to get their hands on 16 million dollars worth of opium so they can sell it on American streets ? You'd still have the same basic plot but no one at the studio or in the audience would be smiling