TITLE: Kelly's heroes
IMDB Link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065938/
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2F4E4913C68734D6&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&v=beAQVm1j56w
Director: Brian G Hutton
Year: 1970
Comments:
Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 war film about a group of World War II soldiers who go AWOL to rob a bank behind enemy lines. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, who also directed the 1968 World War II drama Where Eagles Dare, the film stars Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Carroll O'Connor, with lesser roles played by Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, and Stuart Margolin. The screenplay was written by British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin.
In World War II France, Kelly (Clint Eastwood), a former lieutenant demoted to private as a scapegoat, captures a German colonel in Intelligence. Kelly's superior, Master Sergeant "Big Joe" (Telly Savalas), only wants to know the locations of recreational facilities in the town of Nancy that his unit can enjoy when they get there, but when Kelly notices his prisoner has a gold bar, he gets him drunk to try to get information. Before he is killed by an attacking German tank, the drunken prisoner of war blurts out an interesting tidbit: There is a cache of 14,000 gold bars (valued at $16 million) stored in a bank vault 30 miles behind enemy lines in the town of Clermont. Kelly recruits the rest of his platoon, including skeptical Big Joe, to sneak off and steal it. Eventually, others have to be recruited (or invite themselves) into the scheme, such as an opportunistic supply sergeant "Crapgame" (Don Rickles); a proto-hippie Sherman tank commander, "Oddball" (Donald Sutherland); and a number of stereotypical G.I.s presented as competent, but war-weary veterans. The obvious antagonists are the Germans. However, it quickly becomes clear that the motley band's own officers are just as much an obstacle, if not more so; the company's own commanding officer, Captain Maitland (Hal Buckley), cares more about turning the campaign into a personal shopping spree than for the actual welfare of his men. A large amount of equipment hoarded for the mission is lost when an American plane mistakes the vehicles parked in a forest as German. Luckily the team is spared from going on foot as Oddball shows up at the rally point with his three Shermans and a full bridge building platoon. When intercepted radio messages of the unauthorized private enterprise raid are brought to the attention of gung-ho American Major General Colt (O'Connor), he misinterprets them as communications between patriotic soldiers pushing forward and rushes to the front line to exploit the "breakthrough". Meanwhile, the band crosses a bridge but loses two of their three Shermans and the German shelling of the bridge itself damages it enough that no vehicle can go any further except Oddball's Sherman (which already crossed); the team takes advantage of this by leaving the building crew behind in order to gain a larger share. Kelly's men race to reach the French town before their own army. There, they find it defended by three formidable Tiger tanks with infantry support. The Americans are able to handle all but one Tiger, which camps down in front of the bank itself (of the other two, one was ambushed at the start of the skirmish while the other was lured into a dead-end and shot from behind). Powerless to defeat the armored behemoth, with both tanks damaged and the Sherman being immobilized, Kelly, Oddball and Big Joe gain the German tank commander's (Karl-Otto Alberty) assistance by offering him and his crew a share of the loot. They divide up the gold ($875,000 per share or approximately $10.5 million in adjusted 2008 dollars, not counting the amount already taken by Oddball's crew and the Germans) and go their separate ways, just in time to avoid meeting the still-clueless Colt (who is mistaken by the townspeople for Charles de Gaulle). Maitland himself enters the bank to find a less-than-respectful message left for him, while his men, the self-serving heroes of the hour, make their escape (it is implied that Oddball spent part of his share to buy the Tiger, even though it's fuel line was ruptured).
Buy it and watch its epic. Great movie.
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