I watched Kelly’s Heroes for the umpteenth time tonight on the Military Channel. I love that movie so damn much because of the cast and just because it is plain freaking awesome. I saw Three Kings when it first came out and I automatically thought of Kelly’s Heroes. A few years later I was working for a casino/resort and got to meet Don Rickles and his manager. Normally I wouldn’t gush and be all fanboy but I had to tell Rickles that it was my favorite role in any movie he had ever done. He seemed to really appreciate it. He said that the ensemble cast was pretty much one of the best experiences of his life.
Now as for Three Kings, it is so good and deals with issues that now seem to be pretty controversial. Could there be a movie like that made now with the current political situations. It seems like back during the time frame of both movies being made you could show the military in some type of rogue situations and nobody would say anything. If you did it today, I think the extreme right wingers would complain that it was disparaging the troops.
I’m not sure I have a direct answer to that but I do have a few comments.
As I recall, neither film mentioned was made with the cooperation of the US military, and that probably says it all regarding the military’s opinion of them as the services are normally more than happy to throw lots of expensive hardware at filmmakers if there’s some potential recruitment to be had. In the case of KH this was a decided advantage, as the decision to film in then-Yugoslavia provided both scenic realism and an abundance of more or less correct period vehicles, athough the ‘Tiger’ tanks were well-disguised Soviet models. I should say it may have always been intended to film on location in Europe; the director, Brian G. Hutton, was flush after earlier successes and my understanding was this was something of a pet project for him.
Regarding public reception of the films, although both are essentially heist flicks in a military setting, they are careful to show that the characters involved have some sort of code of ethics, with the KH crew inadvertantly advancing the front and the TK crew preventing a civilian massacre. These plot points were clearly not incidental.
My understanding is that Kelly’s Heroes was not particularly well received by critics at the time of release, with (IIRC) a major criticism being that it treated its subject a bit too light-heartedly for a film released at the height of the US involvement in Viet Nam. I think there is little chance the film could have been made in a Viet Nam setting, then or now; on the other hand, there is no escaping that Donald Sutherland’s character only makes sense as an at least oblique nod to the Viet Nam conflict, just as the filmed version of MAS*H referenced the grinding attrition and increasing pointlessness of 'Nam while ostensibly being set during the Korean conflict.
In the case of TK, OTOH, it seems that audiences in general have become sophisticated enough to realize that no war is ever entirely likely to be a moral exercise for either side. There may have been some right-wing objections to the the US soldiers were portrayed at the time of release, but none really spring to mind. In any event, the main characters and their backgrounds and motivations seem both plausible and realistic, so it would be hard to criticize the film on that score.
Anyway, these remain two of my favorite military-themed movies, and I agree that while Rickles just about steals the earlier film, great little performances abound in both in both of them. I never get tired of seeing them.
i am watching kellys heroes right now. i was pleasantly surprised to see “uncle leo” from seinfeld as a truck driver from the mess of gi’s that oddball brought with him. love this movie, ive seen it many many times. also, i really like 3 kings, i need to re-watch that 