Under-rated wartime caper.

Rating: 7/10 (8 September 2004)

Clint Eastwood reunites with his Where Eagles Dare director Brian G. Hutton for another improbable but entertaining WWII caper. Kelly's Heroes has its moments of wartime spectacle and lots of slambang action, but it also has plenty of comedy thrown in. Many critics judged the film quite harshly, groaning about how it is inappropriate for a film to mix jokes and war. But in truth, Kelly's Heroes never pretends to be a serious wartime account - and the humorous undercurrent helps the film rather than hampering it.
A bunch of American GIs are given a few days away from the battlefront during WWII. However, they are not overly impressed with the quiet, excessively peaceful and "boozeless" village where they've been told to relax. One member of the group, Kelly (Eastwood), has learned of a fortune in Nazi gold bullion hidden away in a bank in a German-occupied town some thirty or more miles behind enemy lines. He tells the other guys about it, and they decide to risk their lives to get hold of the hoard. Of course, pulling off a bank robbery is no easy task at the best of times, but when the bank is so far into enemy territory......
Eastwood is suitably laid-back here, but the real stars of the show are Telly Savalas (dynamic and hilarious as Big Joe) and Donald Sutherland (a hippy tank driver so chilled-out he's happy to eat cheese, drink wine and sunbathe in the middle of a chaotic battle!) The pyrotechnics are well-orchestrated, and Troy Kennedy Martin invests the script with the kind of amusing banter and thrilling set pieces that he gave to The Italian Job a year earlier. Kelly's Heroes is totally unsubtle and totally removed from reality - but what it lacks in tact it makes up for with spectacular destruction and bags of entertainment.