TOO LATE THE HERO (1970) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Robert Aldrich
Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Denholm Elliott,
Ian Bannen, Percy Herbert, Harry Andrews,
Ronald Fraser, Henry Fonda, Lance Percival
A reluctant American officer, assigned to a British combat unit in the New Hebrides, heads out into the jungle with a bunch of misfit commandos to take out a Japanese radio transmitter in advance of a planned U.S. attack. To some extent, this parallels "The Dirty Dozen" (another Aldrich movie), but the mood is more somber and there's a grim edge to the violence. Robertson's good as the cynical Yank, but it's Caine's insolent self-assurance as a Cockney medic that keeps you hooked. When Caine sticks a rifle in Ronald Fraser's face, and fixes him with those unblinking eyes, and tells him matter-of-factly that he'd just as soon shoot him as the Japanese, you believe it, and Fraser does, too. The attitudes reflect the time the movie was made more than the time it's about. The war might be World War Two, but the sensibility is unmistakably Vietnam.
Cliff Robertson
(1923-2011)
