Kelly's Heroes

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Kelly's Heroes

Directed by	Brian G. Hutton
Written by	Troy Kennedy-Martin
Starring	Clint Eastwood Telly Savalas Carroll O'Connor Donald Sutherland Don Rickles
Release date(s)	June 23, 1970 (U.S.)
Running time	144 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 war film about a group of enterprising World War II American soldiers. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, who also directed the 1968 WW II drama Where Eagles Dare, the film is virtually a who's who of Hollywood at that time - in addition to Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland, it starred Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor and Harry Dean Stanton with smaller parts by actors such as Gavin MacLeod and Stuart Margolin who would later become famous on television. The screenplay was written by highly-respected British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin.

1 Synopsis
2 Comments
3 Production information
4 Musical Score
5 Trivia
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

During World War II, Kelly (Eastwood), a former lieutenant demoted to private as a scapegoat, captures a German colonel in intelliegnce and gets him drunk. Before he is killed by a German tank, the drunken POW blurts out an interesting bit of information: there is a cache of 14,000 gold bars stored in a bank vault 30 miles behind enemy lines.

Kelly recruits a group of soldiers on R&R to sneak off and steal it. They include a skeptical master sergeant, "Big Joe" (Savalas); a greedy and opportunistic Supply sergeant, "Crapgame" (Rickles); a proto-hippie Sherman tank commander, "Oddball" (Sutherland); and a number of stereotypical "grunts." The men are presented as competent, if weary veterans; their motivations are more cynical and self-serving than patriotic.

The obvious antagonists are the Germans. However, it quickly becomes clear that the motley band's own superior officers are just as much an obstacle, especially when the unauthorized private enterprise raid inadvertently initiates an Allied advance. Kelly's men race to reach the bank before a clueless Major General Colt (O'Connor) can interfere with their scheme. Ironically, while there is combat with the Germans, ultimately, it is the cooperation of a German Tiger tank commander (Karl-Otto Alberty) that proves vital to achieving their goal.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Comments

Kelly's Heroes stands out from many earlier and contemporary war films in both its cynical tone and mixed conflict, as well as in its technical detail.^{[citation needed]}

The US troops wear the insignia of the US 35th Infantry Division. The division actually was in action around Nancy in France in September of 1944. The film also uses authentic M4 Sherman tanks, while most other contemporary war films, for example Patton, used too-modern M48 tanks. Such technical details as machine guns and entrenching tools are also remarkably accurate in this film. The three Tiger I Tanks used in the film were actually adapted ex-Soviet Army T-34 tanks, though the detail in converting them is remarkable.

There is a great deal of comedy and satire in the film, including a nod to Eastwood's spaghetti westerns in a standoff with a Tiger tank---a virtual remake of the close of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly---right down to the musical score takeoff. This film was produced and released during the Vietnam War, and in the same climate as M*A*S*H.

[edit] Production information

The movie was filmed in the former Yugoslavia, in what is now Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was done mostly because earnings from showings of previous movies in Yugoslavia couldn't be taken out of the country, but could be used to fund the production.

[edit] Musical Score

The main musical theme of the movie (at both beginning and end) is "Burning Bridges," sung by The Mike Curb Congregation with music by Lalo Schifrin. There is also a casual rendition of the music in the background near the middle of the movie.

[edit] Trivia

Although he does not appear in the credits, future director John Landis worked as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes. He also appears in the movie, dressed as a nun. During the shooting of the picture in Yugoslavia, he wrote the first draft of what would eventually become An American Werewolf in London.