Attack
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Movie Reviews of Attack
Movie Review: Just Awesome!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am soo thrilled (You have know I idea) that I found Attack, with J. Palance,Albert.(Creep) and L Marvin. I've told my bros. that I got it, and already they want to get their
hands on it! It was in fantastic shape! I Will buy from the vendor again!
Thanks so much.
Steve
Movie Review: Good old fashioned war drama
Summary: 4 Stars
This sounds like one of those routine war movies -- brave unit leader having problems with a cowardly superior just as the enemy launches a major offensive. But what sets "Attack!" apart from the others is its great cast and director Robert Aldrich's masterful handling of a story derived from a stage play.
Jack Palance is the tough lieutenant who has been let down once too often by his drunken and cowardly captain (Eddie Albert) just ahead of an attack by the Germans. Taking it up with their commanding officer (Lee Marvin) is no use as he is covering Albert's back because he is the son of an influential judge back home.
Matters come to a head when Albert sends Palance's unit head-first into a town crawling with Germans and then refuses to send in more troops to help them. You just know that a major confrontation is coming up, and its one heck of a ride getting there, thanks largely to the fine acting by Palance, Marvin, Albert and the bit players like Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel and Buddy Ebsen.
The US Army reportedly extended no cooperation to Aldrich after reading the hard-hitting script, and this movie was shot on the backlot with a shoe-string budget. Aldrich had only two tanks for his big action scenes, but none of these constraints show up on the screen. The action scenes help open up the movie and broaden its stage play origins.
The film isn't without the usual war movie problems, like the stereotypical evil Nazis and SS troops, but the such problems are few and far between.
Palance is in terrific form, carrying the picture on his broad shoulders. If ever proof was needed that the guy could act, this movie delivers it in spades. His character is no hero -- just a guy doing his job the best he can.
Lee Marvin turns in a strong performance too, and Eddie Albert is perfect as the cowardly captain, especially considering the fact that he was a real life war hero. But the real star is director Aldrich, who keeps things moving along at a nice clip.
The DVD serves up "Attack!" in all its black and white splendour...the print is good with little evidence of wear and tear. The soundtrack is a nice solid mono. A great thinking person's war movie.
Movie Review: Ensemble Piece takes Venice Festival's 1956 Critic's Prize
Summary: 4 Stars
In the arena of public awareness, Attack!'s all-star cast does not seem to have been enough to overcome its B-movie title, one which is neither appropriate nor sufficiently ironic. The film's original name was more in line with the Norman Brooks play on which it is based, "Fragile Fox." Indeed, key scenes are staged and designed like a "filmed play," but that only heightens the drama here. Riveting from the get-go, the 107-minute cut seems to fly by in an hour.
To find the real drama in Robert Aldrich's film, viewers should discard the extreme characterizations of the brave Lt. Joe Costa (Jack Palance) and the cowardly Capt. Cooney (Eddie Albert) like the high and low data that is thrown out before analysis. (Many of the best scenes are absent Palance, whose over-the-top performance could certainly bug some viewers.) The real questions are raised by the seemingly level-headed men in the middle who recognize the potentially volatile situation for what it is and choose to deal with it in ways befitting their divergent perspectives. Bartlett (Lee Marvin) is an ambitious and crafty colonel who tolerates Cooney's incompetence because of the latter's political connections back home. He is at odds with Lt. Henry Woodruff (William Smithers), one of the men who could potentially end up as fodder for Cooney's foolery.
Anyone who has ever been skipped over for promotion or lost the lead in a grade school play owing to a lack of either political connections or a willingness to screw over their comrades will recognize all the characters in "Attack!" Illustrating that human frailties are easily mapped onto a combat situation (and suggesting there's no reason they wouldn't be), this is the scariest of war films. Despite its meditation on moral relativism, "Attack"--universally hailed as an "anti-war film"--never once argues that this particular conflict is not worth the fighting. As the glue that holds the ensemble piece together, Smithers' Woodruff argues, "If we can get rid of Cooney, all we have to do is fight the war."
Movie Review: Exposing the armchair warriors
Summary: 4 Stars
Most of the reviewers here have said it best. Namely, this is a picture concentrating on characters and dialogue (like a good play should). This is a film exposing those leaders who are all textbook and no experience, sending many to their deaths with a lack of support and moral backbone. It is almost prophetic in what most veterans of future wars would find all too common.
In the end, when war is upon the front line, the disguise of an invisible wall between men and rank disappear. Men must ultimately do what is right. Men must protect others not hide behind their cowardly authority.
Right is might versus might makes right is a constant theme in this film. From the righteous anger of Jack Palance to the neutral-turned-virtuous young lieutentant. The former, outraged by the cowardice and failures of Eddie Albert and the latter stopping his friend from committing the atrocity of murder, only to do the same in self-defence and forego Marvin's (the Colonel) temptations of promotion and vanity.
Also, a note to Catholics. Here the soldiers say a proud Hail Mary with reverance, emotion and pride. It is nice to see Catholics portrayed as hereoes. Buy this movie!
Movie Review: Another Powerful Aldrich Dissection of Male Potency
Summary: 4 Stars
War as an opportunity to make commercial and social profit against trying to get the job done and staying alive at the same time. Palance is the scariest bastard in the European theatre of war, and seems to have nine lives. He only leaves this Earth by having his soul ripped from it: his death-face is one of the most terrifying in all cinema. This is Palance as an almost unstoppable force of nature, but who's still recognisably human because he so obviously cares about his men. But he also hates in equal measure. The class difference between himself, Eddie Albert and Lee Marvin makes for an obvious Marxist reading, summed-up in the film's final sequence. But this is also a penetrating study in machismo. As such, one can see this as the third film in Aldrich's trilogy (along with Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Knife) of studies of powerful but flawed men who seek meaning within an amoral universe. Indeed, Aldrich might be the most trenchant analyst of the late fifties American male hero.
The DVD falls short on extras, but the print is good.