It’s my favorite Clint Eastwood movie that isn’t a Western. It has it all: a fun caper, real Shermans (not gussied-up Pershings or Pattons), real half-tracks (including a possibly real T19 105mm howitzer motor carriage), real T-34s gussied up to sorta look like Tigers (you can’t hide the Christie tank suspension), and no romantic subplots (except maybe between Oddball and Moriarty) to muddle things. There’s Clint and Kojak and Kojak’s brother and Murray and Angel and Rickles and Archie and the original Hawkeye and Harry Dean Stanton and Uncle Leo and Bob, the owner of Bob’s Country Bunker, and a host of other people you expect more in 60s and 70s TV.
For those unfamiliar with this masterpiece, Kojak is the sergeant of a squad containing most of the above, plus some redshirts. Clint is a former lieutenant busted down to private who learns that a large shipment of plundered gold is waiting in a bank 30 miles behind German lines to be shipped back to the Vaterland. Entertainment ensues. We can talk about it and as it came out in 1970 spoilers are encouraged and they wouldn’t really detract from a new viewer’s entertainment but it can be viewed on YouTube for three bucks well spent. It is violent, though.
See what I meant, people who haven’t seen it? Without the context those lines spoil nothing and aren’t really funny. But in context and delivered by some of the best in the business they are hilarious.
It’s funny - with the recent zombification of the Inglourious Basterds thread, you get all kinds of posters coming out of the woodwork saying how much they hated hated HATED the film. They hated the characters, they hated the anachronisms, they hated the substance. But films like this, they get nothing but praise.
Well, I HATED this movie. I hated the surfer dude. I hated Carroll O’Connor as a poorly done Patton. And you can’t bust officers down to private - it don’t work that way.
I hate “gold fever” movies in general. People acting all googly-eyed over gold bars, like they think they have a chance in hell of getting 14,000 bars back to the US. They’re just gonna get on a troop ship and go home, with one heavy foot locker? They gonna desert in the middle of a war, find a neutral tramp steamer gonna give 'em a ride back with all that gold? Yeah, right.
Everyone in the movie is a grade-A Asshole, and deserves to be blown up or run over by a tank. Probably my most disliked Eastwood film, behind Sudden Impact.
How could you give a classic rant of Kelly’s Heroes like that and not attack the film for the weird song in the opening credits and the crappy contrite musical score?
For Pete’s sake, they might as well just have, “bought the the world a Coke”, and taught it to sing in perfect harmony .
Once you got past the opening song, you were then subjected to an annoying jazz flute and snare drum combo that accentuated the beginning and ending of almost every scene.
I think the implication was that they were going to convert the gold before returning. After all, most of Europe at the time was essentially one big open marketplace. Example: They shared the gold with the Germans, the enemy.
