HELL IS FOR HEROES (director: Don Siegel; screenwriter: Richard Carr/Robert Pirosh; cinematographer: Harold Lipstein; cast: Steve McQueen (Reese), Bobby Darin (Private Corby), Fess Parker (Sergeant Pike), Harry Guardino (Sergeant Larkin), James Coburn (Corporal Henshaw), Mike Kellin (Private Kolinsky), Joseph Hoover (Captain Loomis), Bill Mullikin (Private Cumberly), Nick Adams (Homer), Bob Newhart (Private Driscoll), 1962)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A fairly-routine WW11 action-packed film. The fighting scenes looked artificial, but the storyline featured a little pyschological edge to it coming by way of the embittered John Reese (McQueen), who seems to have an attitude problem, or maybe a psychological one, or maybe a social problem fitting in and following the rules, as he seems to do fine in battle but tends to crack when not in combat. He was a top sergeant, but was recently busted to a private for stealing a jeep.
The best thing that could be said about the film, is that it avoids a lot of the usual cornball war film clichés about the brotherhood between the troops. Its rise in critical evaluation over the years, where it was once reviewed as a typical war movie but now because of Siegal's rising star as a director, has been granted "cult status," which resulted in receiving much higher praise than I think it deserves.
This was director Robert Parrish's long-time baby, but he didn't get along with the impetuous Mr. McQueen, so he was removed from the film and replaced by Don Siegel. At first, McQueen and Siegel failed to see eye-to-eye, but they patched things up and became lifetime friends. What Siegel did for this B&W film, along with WW11 expert Robert Pirosh, was tighten up the script, make it more suspenseful, and emphasized the psychological differences between the few men of the 2nd squad and the pyschopathological attitude of the McQueen character.
The film opens in Montigny, France-1944. A rest area near the Siegfried line. Sergeant Larkin's (Guardino) men are anxious to go home but instead they will be sent back to the front line. Reese has just been assigned to the unit and acts bottled-up and angry. He's a good soldier and knew the current top sergeant, Pike (Fess), when both were in the North African campaign.
The 2nd squad is given a raw deal, as they are left behind while their company moves out, and the six men of the squad are ordered to make it appear to the Germans that they are a larger group, holding them at bay but not attacking them. The Germans have a fortified pillbox machine gun nest in which to fire at will on the men. The problem for the squad, becomes that the Germans will soon figure out that there is not many soldiers there and will attack them, with the distinct possibility of wiping them out.
Private Driscoll (Newhart) drives his jeep into the area by mistake, as he lost his way to division headquarters. The men see this as an opportunity to requistion his jeep and have their demolition expert, Corporal Henshaw (Coburn), rig it up so that it sounds like a tank. The green combat soldier is made to volunteer by Larkin into joining the combat outfit, where he is taught to fire a gun by Private Corby (Darin), the company's hustler, dispensing items like pens and selling them to the troops for a hefty profit.
This very masculine film, no wartime sex here or female stars, also features Homer (Nick Adams) as an overeager Polish partisan. A Private Cumberly (Mullikin), who says he has a system to keep him sane: "When everything is bad-I think of something that was worst." A gung-ho army captain (Hoover) and a nondescript private (Kellin).
At first, Larkin gets along well with Reese, respecting his soldiering ability. Larkin gets the men to wire empty ammo cans to the trees, fooling the Germans by the noise they make, allowing them to think that they are a large group. They also discover a listening device the German's rigged, so that they could hear any calls to headquarters they make. After the men spot this, Newhart goes into a telephone routine he used as a stand-up comedian, but only here it is not funny and seems out of place.
This is a film that builds to a climax for its brutal payoff.
Soon a friction develops between Larkin and Reese, as Larkin feels that his authority is being challenged, when Reese says that if they wait here, the Germans will attack and kill them all, that the thing to do is attack them first. The men seem to think that this makes sense. But Larkin says his orders are to stay put and not attack, but wait for company reinforcements. He won't do anything until he clears it with Pike.
When he goes to find Pike, he can't find him at headquarters. The men, on their own initiative, fake a patrol over at the German line, but Henshaw trips one of the land mines in the field and the place becomes a shooting gallery.
The climactic battle takes place, right after Captain Loomis says he will court-martial Reese for giving orders to attack the German pillbox and getting a few of the men killed, when he had no authority to do so. Pike in a friendly gesture asks Reese: "Were you right?" Reese responds: "How the hell do I know."
>From the film's title, you can determine how the film will end, as the men prepare to attack the German pillbox, strengthened by company reinforcements. The film can make claim to its antiwar sentiments by showing the insanity of the attack. The McQueen character goes war-crazy, fighting his own demons and those in authority, more than he is fighting the Germans. For the Germans, he appears as a one-man army.
For me it was just another war film, nothing special.
REVIEWED ON 1/23/2000 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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