You Got To Work That Clint-orus: KELLY'S HEROES

And, just two movies in to this little experiment, we hit our first snag.

Not a snag of film acquisition, or a snag of technology. No, no, nothing that simple.

It's the film itself. That's the snag. Kelly's Heroes is the first real clunker in the makeshift Clint Eastwood set. Its biggest sin?

Ungodly boredom. Almost nothing happens for like thirty minutes, and then, when shit does start to go down, it happens in such a relaxed, low-key fashion that I stared at the TV for like twenty minutes, unsure that the plot had actually begun to kick in. I've never seen a movie struggle so much at moving itself into first gear.

I hear Kelly's Heroes has become a perennial Thanksgiving Day-classic, and it doesn't surprise me--this thing crawls along at the same druggy, bloated, self-satisfied pace that you feel after a bout of turkey-gorging. There's something comforting about a movie willing to match you beat for tryptophan soaked beat.

Unfortunately, it leaves you lacking the other 364 (or 365, for all the Leap Year babies) days of the year.

If you're at all interested in catching Kelly's Heroes, here's what you do:

1) Rent a copy of the DVD/Blu-ray.
2) Smash it into a million pieces.
3) Reimburse your video rental joint for destroying their movie (or, if you use Netflix, lie and tell them it was "damaged in shipping").
4) Buy a copy of Three Kings and watch it instead.

I'm serious. Three Kings feels like David O. Russell attempt to fix everything that sucks about Kelly's Heroes. Three Kings has great performances. Three Kings has brutal action and tension up the wazoo. Three Kings has a wealth of political satire and black humor backing up the action.

Kelly's Heroes doesn't.

I'm loath to give it a proper write-up; I'd be exerting more energy towards it than Kelly's Heroes gave me in 142 de-caffeinated minutes. Basically, Clint Eastwood rouses himself from a coma long enough to go after Nazi gold during WWII. Don Rickles, Telly Savalas, Harry Dean Stanton, and Carroll O'Connor figure into his plans. Or something. Don't really care.

You can see the makings for a good movie. You've got these soldiers so disenchanted by all the death and the tragedy and the constant incompetence of their superior officers that they break rank and desert in order to squeeze something worthwhile from the whole shitty endeavor. And again, let me stress---YOU CAN MAKE A GOOD MOVIE FROM THIS IN FACT THEY DID IT'S CALLED THREE KINGS AND IT'S ONLY ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF THE PAST TWENTY YEARS IT'S FUNNY AND VIOLENT AND SAD AND CYNICAL AND GEORGE CLOONEY IS THE FUCKING MAN IN IT AND ANYONE WHO WILLINGLY CHOOSES KELLY'S HEROES OVER IT DESERVES TO GET AIDS AND DIE.

...ahem.

But again, this ain't a good movie. Brian Hutton, who directed Where Eagles Dare the year prior, can't even tickle the same "so bad it's good" button he did in the previous film. Part of him wants to make a biting satire a la MASH or Catch-22. Part of him wants to make a crowd-pleasing, Dirty Dozen-style "men on a mission" movie. He ends up shitting the bed and directing the film after commencing Happy Hour. Richard Schickel claims that the studio cut the guts out from the film. I maintain that had Warner Bros. given Hutton the freedom to make fucking, I don't know...Dr. Strangelove 2, he would have given it the narrative pace and forward momentum of an elderly couple walking laps at the shopping mall. In fact, were I to compare Kelly's Heroes to any other film, it'd be the Rat Pack version of Ocean's Eleven. Same apathetic pace. Same self-satisfied air. Same sense you're getting hoodwinked watching talented guys paid to slack off for two hours-plus hours.

But, end of the day, Kelly's Heroes is all wrong. The elements in play just don't work. Donald Sutherland was criticized, at the time, for playing his "Oddball" character as an 1960s hippie stuck in 1940s Germany. That seems like a bullseye on the wrong target. I take issue with Sutherland but because he's not funny. I could give a shit about the anachronisms. If he brought a little of that MASH mojo I'd have something to recommend. But he doesn't, so I don't.

Even Clint can't make this work. He's miscast, really; people refer to past capers of his, painting him as a rakish scrounger akin to James Garner in The Great Escape or George Clooney's Danny Ocean in Ocean's Eleven. In reality, he mopes and prods himself back into semi-consciousness. They give Rickles a line explaining Kelly's moodiness as a result of accidentally fragging a bunch of his own men, but my guess is Eastwood knew the film was a dog and couldn't force himself to give a shit.

I can't fault that, but I can fault him not entertaining me for not one of the flick's 142-boobless minutes.

In a way, though, I'm glad this happened so soon. I know it's not going to be all wine-and-roses with Clint; I learned that the hard way watching Blood Work. After all, I can't go branding the whole "Untouchable Auteur" label on him without deluding myself about what's to come.

After all, I can see The Rookie waiting for me, beckoning me with its pasty Sheen cheeks and its savage Sonia Braga talons like some mythical Greek monster of yore. That flick requires nerves of steel.

Anticipation of it haunts my dreams.