Too Late the Hero

With his most sophisticated war film, Aldrich and his producers hoped to repeat the success of THE DIRTY DOZEN. Instead, the film became a major flop, sealing the fate of Aldrich’s studios and remaining one of the director’s overlooked masterpieces. A US lieutenant (Cliff Robertson) is assigned to a British unit in the New Hebrides as a Japanese interpreter, where he is to take part in a dangerous mission. His pragmatism proves just as inadequate as the cynicism of the medic Hearne (Michael Caine) when a series of deeply ironic twists of fate turns the operation into a disaster. The nihilistic poetry of the opening credits, in which the flags of the participating nations flutter proudly in the wind before disintegrating in time lapse, foreshadows the ruthless way Aldrich dismantles every notion of heroism: war as a treacherous system. (C.H.)

Courtesy of the British Film Institute.