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KELLY'S HEROES
May 29, 2017  | By David Bianculli  | 2 comments

TCM, 12:00 p.m. ET

 

TCM is showing war-related films all weekend for Memorial Day, but I want to point out this one for special mention. Kelley’s Heroes is a comedy, war drama and heist movie all in one, set in WWII and starring Clint Eastwood. It was released in 1970, the same year as Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, and pulls one of the same neat tricks, of setting a story in a previous war while commenting, at least in terms of attitude, on the Vietnam War currently raging. With M*A*S*H, the setting was the Korean War, and the stars were Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, playing a pair of maverick Army surgeons. In Kelly’s Heroes, Sutherland co-stars here too, playing a long-haired, anachronistic hippie-type WWII tank commander named Oddball. Telly Savalas and Carroll O’Connor also co-star – as does, in the best movie role of his career, Don Rickles as a hustling supply sergeant named Crapgame. All of them team together for an involved and very original plot to go behind enemy lines and rob a bank – a German bank – of its secret cache of gold bullion. At times, it’s very funny. Other times, like any good heist movie, it’s very, very tense.

 
 
 
 
 
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2 Comments
 
 
Saveless Struggle: Brace yourself—there are no checkpoints, and saving progress is a luxury denied. Only Up! demands perfection, and any misstep means retracing your steps through the punishing obstacles.
Dec 13, 2023   |  Reply
 
 
RJ
Did Elliot play a cameo in this movie as a German soldier at the railroad attack.
Apr 30, 2022   |  Reply
 
 
 
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