BEFORE: Telly Savalas carries over again (who knew he made so many WW2 movies?).
THE PLOT: A group of U.S. soldiers sneaks across enemy lines to get their hands on a secret stash of Nazi treasure.
AFTER: This is a sort of hybrid film, half war movie and half heist movie, as a ragtag bunch of U.S. soldiers use their furlough time to execute an unauthorized mission after learning of a bank containing $16 million in gold bars.
Telly Savalas' character may be the highest-ranking in the bunch, but it's Kelly (Clint Eastwood, last seen in "A Perfect World") who comes up with the plan, recruits the team and figures out the best way to get things done when obstacles get in their way.
The film may not be 100% accurate, and it requires you to regard U.S. soldiers as heroes and privateers at the same time, but it was action-packed and very entertaining. Like "Dirty Dozen" it was a bit long in the set-up, taking the first 90 minutes to get to the town where the gold was stored.
And the U.S. tank commander, played by Donald Sutherland (last seen in "The Dirty Dozen") was an odd "hippie" character, a cultural anachronism that was distracting, but also provided comic relief - so that's a bit of a wash.
Also starring Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor (later Archie Bunker on "All in the Family"), Gavin MacLeod (later Capt. Stubing on "The Love Boat"), Stuart Margolin (later Jim Rockford's brother on "The Rockford Files"), Harry Dean Stanton, and Len Lesser (later Jerry's uncle Leo on "Seinfeld")
RATING: 7 out of 10 bayonets
When you discover that the stars of lame, schlocky middlebrow sitcoms had solid, even spectacular careers as dramatic actors, it's a bit like discovering that your dad spent his early Twenties as a ski bum or that your mom tried to make it as, or with, a rock singer, isn't it?
ReplyDelete("The 'Happy Days' dad won a Tony Award for a lead performance in a Pulitzer-winning play? Are you sure?")
It's weird to me because in the old days, people were either TV actors, or movie actors. Crossing over between the mediums was a very difficult thing to do. Once Lucille Ball did a TV show, it was pretty hard for her to get back into movies.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite exceptions is the film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", which (outside of Spencer Tracy) is filled with a bunch of TV actors who were trying to get into (or back into) films - like Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, etc.
It's kind of odd that there's been so many actors this week who are best known (at least to me) for 1970's TV roles, like Don Rickles, Gavin MacLeod and so on.
Today, of course, actors cross over all the time. Most of the cast of "Flags of Our Fathers" has put in some time on either "Law & Order", "Desperate Housewives", "The West Wing", "NYPD Blue" or "The Sopranos".
Woody Harrelson, Greg Kinnear and Clint Eastwood being three other great examples of this week's stars who all began their careers on TV and then made it to the big screen...
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