Entertaining, cynical and subtly subversive

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2016)

This entertaining, tense, yet very cynical view of war is as subversive in it's own quiet way as M*A*S*H is overtly. To take a bunch of murderers, rapists, thieves, then make us root for them as war heroes, and laugh at their antics, then get caught up in their mission but (if we catch it) feel an unease at how that mission quietly echoes the gassing of Jews in concentration camps leads to high number of levels at which to take the film leads to a very complicated movie experience masquerading at 'fun' entertainment. And it IS fun -- that's where Aldrich pulls you in.
Yet to admit even subtly (as he also did in 'Attack') that even a war as 'good', just and necessary as WWII was still an act of insanity on all sides may be even more brave than Altman's more overt counter-culture skewering of the Korean War, a war more 'acceptable' to ask moral questions about.
All that said, as often happens for me with Aldrich, it lost a bit on second viewing. The humor felt more juvenile, the ironies a bit easy. Still a cool, subversive film, but I'd hoped it would grow, not fade.