L'enfer est pour les héros

This World War II film is one of the finest I have seen. It features an allstar cast, great direction, a great script and compelling performances.

Steve McQueen plays an American soldiers who thrives on combat. He gets busted from squad leader to Private when he crashes a jeep. His squad gets sent to the front lines, where he clashes with by-the-book Sergeant Larkin (Harry Guardino). Problems are made worse when the Company pulls out, leaving Larkin's squad to cover a huge section of the front lines. In order to succeed, they trick the Germans in various ways to make them think they're a much larger unit.

The film features a powerful central performance by Steve McQueen. While his lines are short and to the point, his facial expressions and movements are just as important. He makes a very convincing front-line soldier, doing a lot of things many other front-line-combat themed war movies of the time (TO HELL AND BACK, etc) leave out.

Supporting McQueen are Bobby Darin, James Coburn, and Mike Kellin all very young. Their characters were unique at the time but may seem a bit chliched and two-dimensional if you've seen a lot of war pictures.

Also lending a hand if Bob Newhart as a bumbling typist who ends up getting commandeered to help hold the front line position. His telephone monlogue scene is a classic and he makes a very believable scared-stiff REMF, just like Jeremy Davies as Cpl. Upham in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

The battle scenes were obviously filmed on a tight budget but are very authentic appearing. They involve soldiers bleeding profusely and screaming in agony -- not something you see in older war films.

All in all, a very well done, realistic and very believable war film. It was apparently based on a true incident.

The DVD is of high quality. It is finally in letterbox format, about a 1.78:1 ratio. The video quality is superb. The sound is mono but very good mono; quite rich. Also included is a widescreen but scratchy and grainy trailer.

I enjoy and admire HELL IS FOR HEROES so much that I am using it as a model for my own WWII home video, BATTLEGROUND.

In 1944, in France, Pvt. John Reese (Steve McQueen) is assigned for a platoon close to the front. He is a very experienced, but also rebel and neurotic soldier, who lost his ranked position due to his behavior, questioning orders and authority. His platoon joins other army companies in the front, and they are left in only six men to hold up their position against a great quantity of Germans soldiers for a couple of days. They use their experience and many tricks to cheat the enemy, pretending they are in a larger number. This black and white movie of war is a very tense, claustrophobic and full of action. Steve McQueen has an excellent performance, as usual, as well as the rest of the cast and direction. This film is highly indicated for fans of action movie of war. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `O Inferno é Para Heróis' (`The Hell is for Heroes')

This Don Siegel directed film is a very simple war film--similar to Sam Fuller's STEEL HELMET. Both films involve a very small group of American soldiers who are holding out against a larger enemy force and as a result, it's a very tense and claustrophobic film. Unlike STEEL HELMET, this is set in WWII and has a lot of stars and soon-to-be stars, such as Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Bobby Darin, Bob Newhart and Harry Guardino--though at the time, none of them were "big" stars.

A group of only six guys are given the task of filling in where a hundred soldiers had been the day before. The problem is that the Germans are just across the battlefield and the Americans have to try and convince the enemy that there are a lot more than just the six guys. So, they use a variety of ruses to try to keep the Germans at bay--ultimately culminating in an insane attack against a heavily defended pillbox. When this fails, the rather surly and antisocial McQueen decides to try it again....and practically alone.

Overall, it's an incredibly tense film and one with a lot of realism--perhaps too much for some (my wife got pretty upset during one of the bloodier scenes). The acting and direction are very good--in particular, Steve McQueen did an excellent job following the first abortive attack--showing a lot of the effects of exhaustion and fear. However, the whole "court martial" scene following this was a bit silly--it seemed excessive and hard to believe for the Commanding Officer to respond to this brave action this way--or at least it seemed this way to me. Also, the film, towards the end tended to use too much stock footage--a bit of a minus in an otherwise good film. But at least it did end on a very tough and tense note--a definite plus.

Gritty realism and a riveting performance by Steve McQueen highlight the World War II action/drama `Hell Is For Heroes,' directed by Don Siegel. The setting is France, 1944, and American troops are spread thin across a sector of the Siegfried Line. When heavy action in another area precipitates troop movement, a squad of six men is left behind to hold the position until reinforcements arrive, which means a day or maybe two of making the Germans believe they are actually up to strength with a full complement of men. Not an easy task, but like the man said, war is hell. With Sergeant Larkin (Harry Guardino) in charge, and left to their own devices for survival, the men of the 2nd Squad dig in for what just may be the longest night of their lives. And for some, it will prove to be not only the longest, but their last. In the shadow of a murderous pill box held by the enemy, the soldiers make their stand and add yet another footnote to another chapter in the history of the eternal struggle for freedom.

Filmed in stark black&white, Siegel's film succinctly captures the fatal brutality of war, in terms perhaps not as graphic, but every bit as effectively as Steve Spielberg would do some thirty-six years later with his monumental film `Saving Private Ryan.' Siegel may not have had the special effects in 1961 that Spielberg had at his disposal in 1998, but he did have an excellent screenplay (by Robert Pirosh and Richard Carr) from which to work. He tells his story in a direct, unromanticized way that maintains the focus and conveys the sense of urgency of the moment, through which he builds the tension and suspense that makes the peril of the situation immediate and real. Siegel had two predominant elements going for him that helped him achieve success with this venture: One was an instinctive knowledge of what works and how to deliver it; but most of all, he had Steve McQueen to sell it.

McQueen plays Pvt. John Reese, a veteran soldier who transfers into this particular outfit on the very day they are ordered to the front line. And that's just the way Reese wants it. When he reports for duty (three days late), he runs into Sergeant Pike (Fess Parker), who had served with him in another campaign. It's late evening, and the troops are assembling at an old church outside of town that now serves as a makeshift barracks; Pike sees Reese and asks him how he is. `Thirsty,' Reese replies. `Town's off limits,' Pike tells him. The very next scene shows Reese walking into town and finding what appears to be the only bar on a lonely street. Stepping up to the counter, Reese asks the bartender (a woman) for a bottle. `One pack or two?' he asks. `We aren't allow to serve soldiers--' she says. `Two,' he replies, and setting the cigarettes on the counter, he walks around and takes a bottle. And now, without a doubt, we know exactly who and what Reese is; the personification of the iconoclastic loner, embodied to perfection in the form of Steve McQueen.

By all accounts, McQueen was not only a tough guy on screen, but in real life as well; tough meaning that he was always up for a challenge of any kind, and determined to live by his own set of rules, no matter what the cost. But he was a complex individual, and that was but one side of his true persona. To play Reese, McQueen went to that dark, stoic side of himself, exaggerated it, and the result was one of the most intense characters he ever created. Reese is a force of one, adamant and relentless, single-minded and fatalistic. At the moment he's on the Siegfried Line, but for him it's just another battle in a war he's been waging with life since the day he was born. And he knows deep down that it's a war he's never going to win; it's just a matter of time before his hand plays out, and being on the line is just as good a place as any. For him, it's not a matter of options, but of inevitability. It's an exemplary performance, and one for which McQueen never received the acclaim he was due, which unfortunately was not an isolated instance in his career. There was Vin in `The Magnificent Seven,' Frank Bullitt in `Bullitt' and Tom Horn in `Tom Horn,' as well. And that's but a sample of the work he did for which he never received enough recognition. His only real acknowledgement came with his creation of Jake Holman in `The Sand Pebbles,' a role for which he was nominated and should have received the Oscar for Best Actor. But Reese was one of his first, and one of his best.

The supporting cast includes Bobby Darin (Corby), James Coburn (Henshaw), Mike Kellin (Kolinsky), Joseph Hoover (Captain Loomis), Bill Mullikin (Cumberly), Nick Adams (Homer) and Bob Newhart in his film debut as Pvt. Driscoll. Hard-hitting and with unforgiving realism, `Hell Is For Heroes,' though on a smaller scale, perhaps, than Spielberg's `Ryan,' is one of the most effective and memorable war films ever made; Siegel gave it direction and focus, McQueen brought it to life. And it's quite simply one of the best of it's kind you'll ever see. I rate this one 10/10.

This n The Blob were among the first few films of McQueen which i saw during school days n i became a fan of him.

I saw his The Magnificent Seven n others after these two movies.

Revisited it recently on a dvd which I own.

The future king of cool played an angry, morose, detached loner in this flick.

The movie has Bob Newhart in his very first movie role.

Its a very good World War film, not quite in the league of Platoon, Apocalypse Now or Thin Red Line.

But fans of the genre, the director and/or McQueen should definitely check this one out.

I am fascinated by World War II, but i think a lot of 1950s and 60s WWII movies are too cheesy to be believed except a few n Hell is for Heroes is a solid one.

A wounded Reese (McQueen) blowing up enemies' fortification n its occupants and himself is riveting.

This climactic scene is shamelessly copied by a Bollywood war movie Border 1998, during the climax the character of Akshay Khanna copies McQueen's way of blowing up himself n the enemies.