Kelly's Heroes

Reviewed by Michael Peck
The Military Book Review

Way back in high school, a friend and I watched Kelly's Heroes on television late one night. He turned to me and said, "That's the way war should be."

Many a military buff would agree, which is why this movie has become a cult favorite. Kelly's Heroes is a feel-good, shoot-'em-up movie that sidesteps the blood and goes for the glory.

The plot is, pure and simple, a 1970s Hollywood caper movie. An American reconnaissance platoon is embroiled in combat in France in the early fall of 1944 when the Allied advance has ground to a halt.

A captured German colonel reveals to Kelly (Clint Eastwood), a former lieutenant busted to private, that the Nazis have temporarily stashed $16 million in gold inside a bank 30 miles behind German lines. Kelly manages to convince his hard-nosed platoon sergeant, Big Joe (Telly Savalas), to lead the platoon on a bank robbery, assisted by hippie tank commander, Oddball (Donald Sutherland) and his platoon of Sherman tanks.

It's a goofy plot, but as my friend pointed out, it strikes an ancient chord: war as an adventure where the warrior returns home laden with loot, instead of settling for a Veterans Administration check in the mail.

What makes the movie so enjoyable for military buffs is the attention to detail. Filmed in the former Yugoslavia, which had plenty of leftover World War II equipment courtesy of Hitler's army, Kelly's Heroes used real Sherman tanks and what looks astoundingly like German Tigers (actually modified Soviet T-34 tanks). The battlefield action is spectacular, from artillery barrages to Oddball's Shermans shooting up a German railway depot.

Compared to Saving Private Ryan, Kelly's Heroes looks shallow. Other than a jarringly 1970s anti-war message by Oddball, the movie mostly avoids the grittier side of combat. Yet its vivid characters, from Don Rickles playing a sleazy supply sergeant to Carroll O'Connor's hilariously psychotic Patton imitation, make a deeper point. In an insanely murderous world where impersonal artillery shells and glory-hungry generals don't care whether you live or die, why shouldn't an ordinary soldier look out for himself?