Kelly's Heroes

“Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?”

With a star-studded cast and set to the backdrop of World War II, this movie sets up a caper that has to be seen to be believed. One quick note, while the movie is generally a comedy caper movie, it has some darker moments that not everyone will be okay with. These are rare exceptions to a movie that is generally lighter in tone but be aware that they exist before watching.

Clint Eastwood plays the eponymous Kelly, and we also have Donald Sutherland as the anachronistic Oddball, Telly Savalas as Big Joe, Don Rickles as ‘Crapgame,’ Carroll O’Connor as General Colt, Gavin MacLeod as Moriarty, and Jeff Morris as Cowboy, and you have a headline cast that is among the best I’ve ever seen.

The movie starts off with a bang, quite literally as Kelly kidnaps a German officer right from under their noses and has to escape while being shot at. We quickly swap to meet the men he serves with, a mixed bunch of misfits led by a captain that is more focused on trying to take a sailboat out of the area and get it back home to the US than he is leading his men, leaving his sergeant Big Joe as the man that actually keeps things moving for the men.

Kelly returns with his unusual prisoner. Joe has no idea why until they get the man drunk enough to let them know where a huge stock of gold bars is being kept in a bank behind the German lines. Kelly wants that gold and he’s more than willing to share it with the men of his unit, minus the mostly absent captain. But he needs to convince Joe to go along with him and he needs help to pull it off. Breaking into the bank won’t be easy as it’s defended by a contingent of German forces, and they must first get to the heavily guarded installation before they can attempt to acquire their prize.

"Where is that meathead?"

The bulk of the movie focuses on our ever-growing crew of would-be bank robbers and the travails they must overcome to get to the bank in the first place, much less abscond with all the gold. They are quickly joined by Oddball’s Shermans, Crapgame the quartermaster always ready to make a deal, an ad hoc engineering crew, and others in their quest for the German bullion.

They must not only get along with each other, which isn’t a given considering the disparate elements that have to cooperate with here, but they have to deal with the hazards of trying to get through enemy lines while their own side attacks them, officers that range from indifferent to exuberantly interested in their progress, the Germans, dangerous geography, the bank guards, and even some local French citizens that they accidentally ‘liberate’ on the way.

Not quite the old west gunfight we were expecting.

The cast is brilliant here, and I find all of them amusing in their own way. I’m not the most enthusiastic Eastwood viewer, but he’s solid here as the main protagonist. Carroll O’Connor as General Colt, a man that screams exaggerated stereotype, eats up the scenery when he’s on, and I love him for it. For those that don’t know Don Rickles, you are in for a treat as while he isn’t engaged in his full insult comedy routine, Crapgame is a character that you love while also rolling your eyes. Telly Savalas is the most restrained character here as Big Joe and is the voice of reason for his men and their plight. Gavin Macleod is great as Moriarty, one of Oddjob’s tanker crew, and the one with all ‘the negative waves’ in the introductory quote of this review.

But make no mistake, Donald Sutherland as Oddjob is the best character in this movie. People like to point out that he acts like a hippie, which didn’t exist in WWII, but that hardly matters here. He is just so ludicrous and so much fun to watch as he leads his motley crew in support of Kelly’s operation that I could recommend this movie on his performance alone.

"I'm not picking up what you're putting down."

The movie looks largely authentic. Some of the weapons are odd, like the sniper of our crew using a Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle, but the Shermans are actual Shermans and the Tigers, while not actual Tiger tanks are T-34s with effort put into them to look like Tigers, and much of the other equipment is genuine or at least genuine in appearance. This all makes the movie feel more real, especially in its few scenes that get quite grim. Thankfully the levity of the film is front and center more often than not, so the excellent settings help ground it rather than drag it down.

At two hours and twenty-four minutes, this is not a short movie. Luckily, it is one of the best films I’ve ever seen and even if you don’t generally like war movies, I think you’ll enjoy this one. It gets the maximum rating from me.

Four bars of stolen gold out of four.

– While I’m sure many reading this are aware, some may not know that Carroll O’Connor is mostly known for his role as Archie Bunker in the TV series All in the Family. He also was the police chief on the tv series In the Heat of the Night.

– Don Rickles is famous for his biting humor although his nickname was ‘Mr. Warmth.’ Every bit of info I can find points to his almost vicious form of comedy being just an act, and that he was genuinely nice when not on stage.

– Gavin MacLeod is best known for being Captain Stubing on the TV series The Love Boat, and writer Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

– Telly Savalas was of course the eponymous star of the TV series Kojak.

– Jeff Morris also played Bob, the owner of Bob’s Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers.

– Donald Sutherland and Clint Eastwood starred in many films of various genres and starred together in two other movies beyond this one: Terror in the Aisles and Space Cowboys.

– The movie is based on a real incident that is contained in the book Nazi Gold: The Sensational Story of the World’s Greatest Robbery – and the Greatest Criminal Cover-Up by Ian Sayer and Douglas Botting.

Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.

• Movie Reviews home