Hell is for Heroes
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.45 You Save: $3.50 (27%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.02 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Hell is for Heroes
Movie Review: Better than Saving Private Ryan. Far Better.
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched Saving Private Ryan once. Not only did I fail to see what all the fuss was about, I thought it was pretty dumb and, at times, insulting. Yes, the battle scenes were well done. But every time one of the characters spoke, it sounded bogus and false. Tom Hanks at the end, muttering, "Earn ... this ..." Please.
In contrast, "Hell is for Heroes" does not contain one false moment. Every line of dialogue seems real. Every scene - even the comic ones - resonates. I've watched "Hell is For Heroes" about a dozen times and will likely watch it a dozen more. Don Siegel didn't have Spielberg's budget, but the writing and acting in "Hell is For Heroes" are far superior.
In "Private Ryan", there's a bit of a ruse being played. Spielberg made the action scenes so "real" and so gruesome and so violent. This was done, ostensibly, to impress the audience with the "authenticity" of war. But the gore covered what was essentially a weak storyline and inauthentic dialogue. It's a way of cheating the audience. Ben Stiller exposed this technique and justly ridiculed it in "Tropic Thunder", an infinitely more honest film than "Private Ryan."
Siegel didn't have the money for the big theatrics, the blockbuster opening scene. Instead, the film begins with Steve McQueen reporting for duty. And within a couple of minutes and only a couple of lines of dialogue, McQueen shows us what John Reese is about. He has to. Because we don't have the special effects, the actors and the writing need to carry the film. Which is as it should be.
Take just a couple of scenes: Fess Parker's Sgt. Pike talking with McQueen's Private Reese:
Reese: What about Larkin?
Pike: Knows how to take orders, how to give em'. He's a good man.
Reese: He better be.
That's just a hundred times more realistic than "earn this."
Or McQueen saying to James Coburn's character, "And you?"
Or McQueen saying to Nick Adams's Homer, "You got no business on the front line. Them heinies catch you and start pulling out your toenails, you'll spill everything you know."
This is how men in a situation like that would talk. Can we depend on the man in charge? Does he know what he's doing? Will we survive the night? There's no time for maudlin speeches about getting home to the wife.
Everyone's good in the film. Coburn, Harry Guardino, Parker, Adams, Bob Newhart ... they all turn in top performances. But it's McQueen's film.
A word about McQueen. It's become obvious over the years that he was a very underrated actor. Because of his good looks and his superstar status, he was never really given his proper due during his lifetime. But no one can watch this film and say he wasn't great at his craft. This is the second best performance of his career. ("Junior Bonner" was his best.) Look at what he does with motion. The way he holds his cigarette or that bottle of brandy. The intensity, the mood conveyed. The way he tends to his guns, his ammo, his butcher knife. There is no need for another character to tell us he's burned out and doomed or perhaps even psychotic. We see it. McQueen himself shows us. Consider the best actors of that time: Brando, Montgomery Clift, or - had he been alive - James Dean. Could they have done any better in that role? I doubt it.
James Patrick Hunt
author - "Maitland's Reply", "Bridger", "The Assailant"
Movie Review: This Is the Only Movie About the Siegfried Line Campaign
Summary: 5 Stars
I've seen them all, and this is solely about the campaign from September, 1944, until the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944. Since the Newhart character mentions his Division headquarters being at the French town of Thionville, it means that this fictional outfit was located at the sector just a few miles east, i.e., south of Trier, Germany and probably a part of Patton's Third Army. My uncle fought in that campaign. His letters home confirm the rough time his outfit had in September and October, 1944. Most of the units were understrength after a few days at the front line. The Germans had constructed their defenses so that the pillboxes, mostly camouflaged, had interlocking fields of fire so that they were mutually supporting. Also, they had excellent observation points for artillery fire direction. Thus, the "Amis" (the nickname for the U.S. troops given by the Nazis) were under fire at all times.The replacement troops usually were so green that they didn't last a month, and many died after a day or two without knowning even what outfit they belonged to. Thus, this movie captures the realism of what that combat was like. I especially liked the attention to detail, e.g., the night patrols, the minefield, the concertina wire, etc. Both sides sent out nightly patrols. These were the days before spy satellites and infrared or night vision devices. The only way to get good intelligence was to send out some men to capture prisoners for interrogation. That explains why Reese was so concerned about the Germans finding out how thin his sector was held, and why the squad tried to take measures to fool the enemy into thinking they were a larger force. Another good realism was having the mortar squads fire for effect on the approaches to the pillbox. However, in the real war the troops tried to outflank it. The veterans I have talked to say the best way to knock the pillbox out was to get in the rear of it and drop some grenades down the ventilation pipe. The Germans usually came out running after one of the grenades exploded. However, due to the need to provide a heroic end for Reese, the movie has him going directly in front of the firing aperture and making a fatal but explosive end to the machine gun.
The U.S. Army lost about 50,000 troops during this 3 month campaign. The lines of supply were outstretched, and the equipment, e.g., tanks, trucks, artillery, were in need of resupply and repair due to the long trek across France. Hitler had the West Wall(the actual name for the Siegfried Line) defended to give his forces time to reorganize in preparation for the Ardennes Campaign in December, 44. My uncle's unit was restricted in its' battle against the West Wall to the point where the Division Artillery could only fire ten (10) rounds per gun per day!
This movie has to be seen in order to understand how this happened, and to appreciate what our ancestors had to endure. This, in my estimate, is the best WW II movie before Saving Private Ryan since it captures the gritty and violent world in a realistic way, before all the advances in special effects.
Movie Review: In Hell There Are No Heroes
Summary: 5 Stars
HELL IS FOR HEROES is one of the grittiest most realistic films made about war and men at war. This is not a film that glorifies war nor does it serve as a patriotic song of war. Rather director Don Siegel uses black and white in a manner that is more real than if he had used color. The time is late 1944 or early 1945 and the American army is getting ready to storm the Siegfried Line, the final steel curtain protecting Nazi Germany. But the Wehrmacht is far from licked and plans to counterattack. It is at the critical juncture in the hours before this German push that the film begins. Steve McQueen is private Reese, a soldier who has his private demons with which he must contend. McQueen in real life and Reese of the film share the same tag of the bitter loner. Reese is the dramatic center as he is unable to fit into the regimented life of the GI. He is reduced in rank for crashing a jeep and later is transfered to a unit that is promised a break from combat. This promise is soon broken as military necessity demands that they be sent straight back into the front lines. Reese cooly calculates his chances of survival as nil but he refuses to allow that realization to alter in any meaningful way his essential persona of the disgruntled GI. Instead he chooses to continue to fight in the only way that he knows, none of which involves working through sanctioned channels. He leads an unauthorized attack on a fortified German pillbox that might have saved the day had his squad had more men, but it did not. The attack is beaten off with the loss of two fellow soldiers. Even during the climax when Reese is threatened with courts martial, McQueen plays Reese as one who best communicates with facial tics and wobbly body language. We can see a world of torment within his brain as he knows with a bitter sureness that his life has no other purpose than to function as a lever to reduce that hated pillbox to smoking ruins.
There are other actors who complement McQueen's sterling performance. Bob Newhart steals more than a few scenes as the bumbling real echelon soldier who complains that he knows only how to type. Fess Parker is the steady company sergeant who understands Reese's problems but cannot offer meaningful help. Other notables from the 60s include Nick Adams, Mike Kellin, Harry Guardino, and James Coburn. The film focuses relentlessly on the grotesqueness of combat. We see Americans scream in pain while their mates cannot even take time to bury them. What emerges by the final reel is the same sense of mindless cruelty that later would come to mark SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but here back in 1962 even with the limited budget that Siegel had to contend with does not reduce HELL IS FOR HEROES in stature. It is quite simply one of the best films that purports to show how and why men react to combat as they do.
Movie Review: Tiny war movie, big meaning...
Summary: 5 Stars
Hell is for Heroes is indeed a statement.A year before the release of "The Great Escape", Steve McQueen starred in a quite different role and kind of war movie.
A squad of G.I.'s, cut off from its lines has to convince the Germans that they actually are the main strike force and in order to do so they have to permanently keep them on their toes.
A bunch of brave but desperate soldiers with a limited armament and scarce ammunition holding in check a still well equipped and greatly outnumbering German Army? Unthinkable?
Watch this movie and learn.
These are all poor guys who, against their will and against all odds have to choose how to die. There's no right or wrong. Their heroic actions originate from the desperate hope to keep alive a little bit longer, even if just for an hour, a minute, a second...
This is also war. Sometimes you simply can't choose your destiny. You simply are and simply want to remain... alive.
It's a simple straight forward story that could very well be an ideal companion to two other movies of this kind: "The Men", starring Marlon Brando and "Attack!", starring Jack Palance.
It's the first time I have watched it on DVD and I was highly impressed by its quality. Unfortunately there are no extras, nor documentaries, whether of the movie or of that Historical period.
It would be nice if the Studios included some documentary footage referring to the various war movies made.
For instance, how would you like if 20th Century-Fox included some news or documentary reels on the actual attack on Pearl Harbor with "Tora! Tora! Tora!" for you to compare reality with recreated fiction?
Or further, wouldn't you love to have footage of the actual Battle of Midway with Universal's "Midway", or the battle at Kasserine Pass with "Patton" or "The Big Red One"?
Sometimes it's not enough to have trailers included, a bit history and culture, combined with entertainment wouldn't be so bad after all.
Pity, but still worth your hard earned money.
Movie Review: Pinned in front of a pillbox!
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a fan of WWII films and in these last days I was able to see & enjoy some gems of the genre that I've been searching for a long time.
"Hell is for Heroes" (1962) is an excellent (yet underrated) World War II movie, directed by Don Sigel, who is also responsible for such great movies as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956) and "Dirty Harry" (1971).
This film, with a low-budget allotment, is sustained by brilliant play-acting & intelligent script due to Robert Pirosh (also accountable for "Battleground" (1949)).
The story is situated ending 1944 as American troops try to force the Siegfried Line.
Pvt. Reese is a former NCO reduced in rank for rebellious controversial attitudes; he arrives as last minute replacement.
Once the battalion is in line the squad to which Reese is assigned, is left alone with the objective of maintaining a difficult position for a couple of days while the rest of the company is needed elsewhere.
Those stark 48 hours are the core of the film. Soldiers & NCOs are confronted with limit situations where they must act following their best judgment.
Playacting is excellent with outstanding McQueen performance as Reese, deserving IMHO more recognition. Fess Parker as Sgt. Pike & James Coburn as Cpl. Henshaw give solid personification as well.
Music composed by Leonard Rosenman underline notably each action.
It is a very commendable movie for all those interested in war films.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.