May 29 movie: Kelly's Heroes. Soldiers find out about a cache of gold bars in enemy territory and set out to steal it. Sound familiar? Sound like, maybe, Three Kings? Yeah. Three Kings must have been, um, "inspired by" Kelly's Heroes, and I'm kind of surprised I never heard about the earlier movie when Three Kings came out.
In some ways they're not actually that similar -- Three Kings is much more political, and Kelly's Heroes is much more cynical. Let that sink in a minute. Kelly's Heroes is more cynical. Much more cynical. There's that whole redemptive thing at the end of Three Kings which doesn't happen at all in Kelly's Heroes.
Kelly's Heroes stars a whole bunch of people. Notably Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles (being surprisingly not annoying), and Donald Sutherland as a hippie. In the Army, in WWII! A hippie whose CO died, so he and his whole platoon tuned in, turned on and dropped out. They lie around their tank letting their hair grow and listening to sitar music. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, then again the movie never takes it self too seriously. It's basically a heist movie set in the war, not a war movie. Though there is one excellent battle scene (the one in the minefield) that could have been in any serious war movie.
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