Too Late the Hero

"Too Late the Hero" is an excellent WWII piece whose plot served as the basis for "Aliens" and "Southern Comfort" and is just as good as those other excellent movies: reluctant hero Cliff Robertson joins a motley group of soldiers (here British troops, including loud-mouthed Michael Caine and mad Ian Bannen) led by an incompetent officer, Denholm Elliot, and an experienced sergeant, Percy Herbert, who dies early on. Soon they are being stalked by a very ruthless enemy (Japanese troops led by Ken Takakura, whose role is, refreshingly, not a stereotype - coming across as a rather efficient officer) and shifty Ronald Fraser attempts to save his skin at the expense of the others. As this is Robert Aldrich there is a lot of brutal action, the characters have very few redeeming features but are excellently portrayed by Robertson and the excellent selection of British character actors, and are very anti-military! The climactic scene where the survivors race across open ground under fire from the Japanese is one of the best climaxes ever!

What do you know about psychological warfare? Not much I guess.

Well, this is a war movie with a major twist. It's much less about shelling the enemy or just drill some holes in him, but more about "really" to outsmart him.

An American officer, an Interpreter in Japanese, who's a real artist when it comes to avoid the battlefield, is about to get a long awaited leave when he suddenly is tasked to help a bunch of British raiders in their endeavor to capture and destroy a forward listening Japanese outpost.

Through thick and through thin (literally), men who hate each other as well as hating the American officer (played by Cliff Robertson) have to face a common enemy who masterfully hides in the Jungle.

One by one they get hunted down by the Japanese. Nevertheless, the mission succeeds, but now the remaining force has to return to base. Not an easy task, considering that the Japanese made prisoners and are using them as bait while they communicate with the only two remaining raiders (Robertson and Michael Caine). Through a microphone and various loudspeakers scattered throughout the Jungle and by performing a highly skillful and mind-shattering blackmail, they try to lure the two to surrender.

A well timed war drama, masterfully played by all the actors involved figuring Ian Bannen ("The Hill", "The Outrage" etc.), Harry Andrews ("The Hill", "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Battle of Britain"), Denholm Elliot ("Raiders of the Lost Ark", "A Room with a View"), Ronald Fraser ("The Hill", "The Wild Geese") and Ken Takakura ("The Yakuza", "Antarctica", "Black Rain").

If you like two movies into one: a War Movie and a Suspense Thriller, then the price is really low.

The DVD edition is as one may expect from Anchor Bay. No extras included, except for the trailer, but the movie alone is, in my view, a tiny masterpiece and well worth the effort.

By the way, if you're looking for a similar movie, forget it. It's the only one in its genre. Think about it.

TLTH is a solid war movie made in a time devoid of Tom Cruises, Di Crapios and other mattodamonic Bennaffleckians. Caine and Robertson look like men, not wimpy little effeminate preppies which we're served and rammed down our throats en masse nowadays. Michael Caine participated in the Korean war as a soldier, while Denholm Elliot spent several years as a Japanese P.O.W. in WW II; what's the toughest ordeal Casey Affleck ever had to go through? A broken nail? And it partially shows on screen, of course.

The main drawback is the length; I saw no reason for this plot to use up over 2 hours of screen time. A minor problem was the occasional mumbling.

One of the things I liked here is that there was a more realistic way of looking at World War II. In recent decades we've had U.S. liberals and other clueless Leftists tell us how "valid" and "noble" that war was, as opposed to other wars that came later, that were supposedly totally immoral, unclean, nasty and vile. However, there is no such thing as a "pure" or "sanitized" war. The lack of discipline, morality and even courage among some of the British troops in this film is a refreshing break from the kind of silly over-glorification of WW II - especially the way this stands in contrast to the over-vilification of wars fought by America in the decades after that.

Judging by Caine's memories (from his autobiography) related to filming TLTH, a documentary on the making of the film would have been fascinating to watch.

Too Late the Hero is directed by Robert Aldrich who also co-writes the screenplay with Lukas Heller and Robert Sherman. It stars Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Henry Fonda, Ken Takakura, Denholm Elliott, Lance Percival, Ronald Fraser and Ian Bannen. Music is by Gerald Fried and cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc.

Lawson (Cliff Robertson) is an American naval officer who specialises in Asiatic languages, thus he is sent to a Pacific island to assist a group of British soldiers on what seems a routine mission. The mission is to simply knock out the Japanese army's key transmitter, but as the men get deeper into the jungle terrain it becomes obvious that the odds of survival are minimal at best. With inner fighting escalating and a hostile enemy closing in fast, it's a time for heroes to be born and friendships to be laid bare.

Often, and wrongly, considered a weak attempt by Aldrich to cash in on the success of his Dirty Dozen movie three years earlier, Too Late the Hero had been written some ten year previously. Although some way away from the gutsy grandeur and bulging biceps of The Dirty Dozen, TLTH is still a potent war movie. Often claustrophobic in mood and acerbic in war character observations, film holds narrative attention from first reel to last. Bursts of violence drift in and out of the plot to keep things on the boil, but it's the excellently drawn characterisations of the major players that stops this from merely being another run of the mill "insanity of war" movie. It's also nice to find the Japanese are portrayed as an intelligent foe, and not the irksome machine gun fodder so rife in other films of the ilk. It helps to have Takakura turning in a stoic performance as part of the latter, too.

Some other astute reviewers has given this film a tag line of it being a unique war film, not a truer line has been typed on the internet forums. This film, tho not bringing anything new by way of the psychological aspects of men under duress, always remains a thoroughly engrossing picture. Helmed by the criminally undervalued Aldrich, film boasts a ream of excellent performers making it unique by bringing to life a screenplay that's not pandering to any conformity's of the genre, it relies totally on strength of dialogue and character formations to capture our interest. Really the only charge from dissenters that might stick here is that it's arguably just another Vietnam allegory that the 70s seemed intent on giving us. Arguably, mind.

It's a bloody suicide mission!

That the cast list contains Michael Caine (brilliant here with gritty swagger), Cliff Robertson, Denholm Elliott and a barely used Henry Fonda is of obvious interest from the start, but the ace card in Too Late The Hero's pack is with its supporting players, Ian Bannen, Harry Andrews, Ronald Fraser and a serious turn from comedy specialist, Lance Percival, where all of them in the sweltering confines of the Phillipines location manage to pull the viewer into the mix and fully realise the crispness of Aldrich's excellent screenplay; aided superbly by Biroc who manages to convey via his photography some apt sweaty jungle madness. Yes! This is not a film for those wanting guns a blazing at every turn, it's simply not that type of Gung-Ho picture, those bursts of action, while hitting hard, are swamped by the focused action of the human mind at work, the kind where greed, mistrust and a basic survival instinct are the order of the day.

The set-up of the two opposing armies on this island is a bit daft, so some suspension of logic is needed from the off, while there's no escaping the fact that there are a number of war movie clichés within. Yet this is still potent stuff, a film with things to say and corrosive in its telling. Making for once, the negativity of such material, still a rewarding viewing experience. 8/10

This movie is a personal one for me. I was a high school student at George Dewey H.S., Subic Bay, Philippines from 1968-70. My buddies and I were extras in the movie when it was made out there. We would cut classes and our principal would come out to the movie set to take our names down. We got in trouble when we got back, but this was a once in a lifetime deal. We were paid $12 a day. It was cheaper to use off-duty sailors and marines as well as the high school guys as extras than to pay for extras to be flown in from the U.S. We picked up buses from various parts of the base early in the morning and were taken to the naval magazine where the movie was being filmed. We were out from 6:00 A.M. to about 4:00 P.M. I remember the prop people built this fantastic set with huts and a fake stone church that was used as the Colonel's headquarters. It was nicer than the huts the Filipino people lived in and they wanted to keep them after the movie was finished. They had to be torn down though because of insurance purposes. They had brought these British Army uniforms for us to wear but they were new and looked too good so they ran over them with trucks to give them a rough look. To this day I remember many wild times on the set. Once when Cliff Robertson arrived at the base and was in the Colonel's headquarters, the director Mr. Aldridge yelled at myself and a buddy because we were playing our acoustic guitars too loudly on top of the fake stone church and it could be heard during the scene. I guess Hendrix music was not around in WW2. Another time between takes, Michael Caine and his buddies were on the steps of a building and he started to sing "Hey Jude" by the Beatles. Everyone sang along. It was great and to this day whenever I hear that song it takes me back to that great time! (that was 37 years ago) One of the side actors brought along his girlfriend and she ran around on the beach in her bikini. That was indeed a great sight as sailors, marines and high school kids took breaks from the set to hang out on the beach. I remember meeting the British actor with the broken nose who was in "Flight of the Phoenix" with Jimmy Stewart. He was in the movie and seemed to be a nice guy. A Philippine patrol boat parked at the beach dock. They were kind enough to let us dive off their boat into the water during lunch breaks. Some of the guys earned $18 a day by lying in an open field being dead bodies. These were the soldiers from the movie who were shot by the Japanese snipers. There was a fire on the set one day and shooting had to be stopped. They repaired the set and the movie went on. Parts of the movie were shot near our base hospital on the mountain at Cubi Point in the jungle. These were the scenes where the commando team was in the jungle on the mission. The movie people would party at the Officer's Club at Cubi. It was not well received by all the officers. The movie guys had long hair and dressed very casually, and the marine fighter pilots did not care for this group. I did not hear of any fights though. My buddy next door to our quarters had Michael Caine and some others over for a home cooked dinner. It was well received. It was a great time to be in the Philippines back in those days. After we finished our tour out there we went back to a naval base at Pax River, Maryland. I went up to New York to visit my aunt and she took me to see the movie. It was pretty good. I especially enjoyed it since I could see all my buddies walking around in the background with rifles or just hanging out. It was a great movie and I must say it was filmed in the real jungle setting with snakes and all. No Hollywood back-set here!