"Well we're all nuts or we wouldn't be here."

Rating: 8/10 (8 August 2015)

A typical World War II movie this is not. If you had any doubt it's all dispelled when Donald Sutherland appears on screen as Sherman tank commander Oddball. An anachronism if there ever was one, Oddball represents not one, but two distinct eras that followed the 1940's. His 'Hi Man' and 'don't you dig how beautiful it is' corresponds to the following decade's beatnik period, at the same time mingling with the Sixties' fascination with hippies and their 'freaks' and 'negative waves'. All pretense at a serious war film is done away with pretty quickly, and that's not even taking into account the impossible task set before Kelly's heroes.
Thinking about it now, Kelly (Clint Eastwood) took a lot on faith when he took the German officer's word for fourteen thousand bars of gold stashed away in a French bank. Personally, I would have been a lot more skeptical myself, but that's just me. Not only was Crapgame a pretty good name for Rickles' character, but pretty much described the mission and it's chances of success.
Just before my viewing of the film on Turner Classics, moderator Ben Mankiewicz explained how the production was filmed in (then) Yugoslavia because the country maintained so much of it's military hardware left over from WWII. So at least there's that element of authenticity to complement the story's action sequences. Not sure about the title though; I realize it was Eastwood's Kelly who came up with the scheme, but he was subordinate to Big Joe (Telly Savalas) rank wise. To my mind, Savalas might have had even more screen time than the top billed star, causing me to think that this might have been better served up as 'Telly's Heroes'.