Kelly’s Heroes is one of those films that threatens to overstay its welcome with the long runtime but ends up being solid all around. It’s certainly better than a good deal of the military/war films that I’ve seen. The comedy really helps to cement itself as a good all around title and it still has time for the serious action scenes as well. This would be tough for almost any title to match I’d say.

The movie begins with Kelly escaping the Nazi base with one of their commanders. He finds out from this guy that there is a huge shipment of 14,000 gold bars that went into a nearby town. The town is significantly behind enemy lines but Kelly smells a huge pay day. So he rounds up a lot of his pals from the army to go and get the gold. Not a whole lot mind you, they want to keep this as a tight operation but a guy called Oddball overhears the plan. He insists on coming along and considering that he has 3 tanks at the ready, Kelly figures it will be a good idea to let him in. So they begin their adventure deep into enemy lines. Can they pull this off?

It’s pretty easy to see why the characters are all super stoked about this though. As one of them says, they face this kind of danger every day for only $50 per day. Well now they can risk their lives for life altering amounts of money. Not a bad deal you’d have to admit. Of course it also doesn’t take away from this being a very difficult mission. So there is a body count and not everyone makes it through. The deaths are taken pretty seriously and the film is able to blend the two genres well. When a character goes down, the cast have a moment of silence before going back to the yelling and bickering.

Kelly makes for a really good main character. You can’t picture anyone else being able to contain this many personalities running around in the same room. They would just completely overwhelm a lesser character but they aren’t going to be pushing Kelly around. Early on it takes a lot of convincing for his boss to get in on this deal and it was only the fact that Kelly was fully prepared to go along without the commander that it forced him into this. The cast for the movie is also impressively large. There are a ton of moving pieces here with different plots that you have to keep track of at once.

Oddball is probably the biggest character next to Kelly. That guy is commanding his own share of troops and while his leadership style is considerably different, he gets the job done as needed. The guy always sounds rather out of it which is part of the appeal. I probably still wouldn’t trust him with a job no matter how many times it turns out well though. The guy has exceptionally good luck which is really handy to have out on the field but you are always worried about when it will run out. You just know that it’ll run out at the absolute worst moment.

I also liked the head general who was at home minding his own business until he heard that the main characters were so deep into enemy territory. He woke up real quick and decided to join them. The guy basically treated the whole thing like a big ball game. It may not be the most responsible way to view things and it was pretty clear that he wouldn’t be much good in a fight but I at least liked the enthusiasm. At the very least he was going to award them all and wasn’t some phony. Him enjoying the celebrations and everything is just the price that the others have to pay for this.

A good part of the film’s appeal is really in all of the banter between the characters and that definitely speaks to the solid writing of the movie. All of the characters tend to bounce off of each other pretty well. It doesn’t mean that everyone is likable but it does mean that you enjoy all of the conversations. The characters really aren’t afraid to get in each other’s faces and yell a lot. They’ve all got big personalities after all but they also are able to get together as a group against the enemy as needed. There is never a moment where they mix up what they want to do with what they need to do.

That’s probably the toughest part to get right for a title like this. The ending is also pretty satisfying. It may get rough for one of the characters but for the most part all of the others get a good resolution. I tend to enjoy heist films and hadn’t seen a wartime one like this before. After watching it, I would be down for more in this genre. It’s probably still a genre that will be best in city type environments but this one showed that war torn areas can work as well. That’s another pretty strong feather in the film’s cap. I typically don’t even enjoy the war setting as a backdrop but this one managed to make it work better than I would have guessed. It’s not over the top muddy and gruesome or anything like that. It’s no summer picnic but it doesn’t get in the way of the story or have me waiting for them to hit up the big cities.

Overall, Kelly’s Heroes is a pretty fun film. A lot of the humor was really well timed and the action was good. There is a lot going on here and that’s a good thing because of how long the film is. I do think they probably could have shaved off 20 minutes or so though. You can feel the film’s length towards the end with the big climax and whenever you can feel the length like that, you know that they are cutting it super close. As long as you enjoy a good laugh then you should watch this one. It’s very rare to see a war movie that is just having a good time like this so you really need to savor that feeling.