100 BEST WAR MOVIES #55. Attack! (1956)

 

“Attack!” is a 1956 film from Robert Aldrich (“The Dirty Dozen”) based on the play “Fragile Fox”. He bought the rights when he failed to obtain those for Irwin Shaw's The Young Lions and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. Aldrich had not seen the play, but read the script. The movie was low budget  ($750,000) and was shot on the back lot in just 35 days. It made $2 million. Because of the plot, the Pentagon refused any cooperation. The Army refused to admit there were cowardly officers.  Shame!  Aldrich had to rent two decidedly inauthentic tanks. They  were modified M3 Stuarts. This just adds to the “charm” of the film.  (First use of the word charm in a review of this movie.) 

The film is set in WWII Belgium before the Battle of the Bulge.  A depleted American platoon led by Lt. Costa (Jack Palance) is assaulting a pill box and gets pinned down.  The company commander Capt. Cooney (Eddie Albert) is a coward who refuses to support the attack.  Costas survives and is in a bad mood, to say the least.  It turns out that Lt. Col. Bartlett (Lee Marvin) is propping up Cooney for future patronage from Cooney’s father who is an influential judge.  Costas is very cynical and the only thing that prevents him from fragging Cooney is his friend Lt. Woodruff (William Smithers).  Smithers is the buffer between Costas and Cooney.  He wants Cooney gone, but doesn’t want his friend in Leavenworth.

Bartlett orders Cooney to capture the next town.  Cooney decides a full-scale effort (which would involve him facing flying metal) is uncalled for and orders Costas to lead a squad into an Alamo on the outskirts of the town.  Before leaving, Costas tells Cooney that if he leaves him hanging again, “I’ll shove this grenade down your throat.”  He forgets to add “sir”.  It’s “last stand” time.  Costas is shocked, shocked to find that Cooney pulls a Cooney

It’s Hitler’s last great counteroffensive time as the Battle of the Bulge hits the company.  Bartlett arrives and literally slaps Cooney into defending the town at all costs.  Cooney does not have the cowardice slapped out of him.  Instead, he snaps and is psychiatrist couch-bound.  Unless Costas has survived the Alamo.  Indeed, Costas arrives in a friggin’ fraggin’ mood, but is distracted by having to take out a German tanks with a bazooka.  He then suffers one of the best woundings in war movie history.  The final scene takes place in a basement with Germans rampaging above.  Things are said, things are done.  Issues are resolved.  Not a happy ending, but satisfying.

ACTING:                      A

ACTION:                      A  6/10 in quantity

ACCURACY:               C  6/10 quantity

PLOT:                           A

REALISM:                   B

CINEMATOGRAPHY:   A 

SCORE:                       C

QUOTE:  PFC Bernstein:  When you salute them two, you have to apologize to your arm.

 

BEST SCENE: when Costa tries to kill Cooney

Talk about getting bang for your buck.  The only thing low budget is the tanks.  This was Aldrich’s seventh movie and he is definitely showing his style and panache.  The film does have the stage vibe you often get when plays are transferred to film, but he uses cinematic touches to negate that.  His camera shoots through barriers and doorways.  There are shots from above and diagonal views and deep focuses.  It’s a bit showy, but adds to the appeal of the movie.  The score gets attention with sometimes discordant piano music. But some of the music is inappropriately patriotic.  The film is one of the most anti-war films. Aldrich:  "My main anti-war argument was not the usual 'war is hell,' but the terribly corrupting influence that war can have on the most normal, average human beings, and the terrible things it makes them capable of that they wouldn't be capable of otherwise." 

The acting is outstanding with Palance successfully treading the line between scene-chewing and scene-stealing.  It is a remarkable performance with tremendous energy.  Costas is one of my favorite war movie characters.  The rest of the cast is perfect.  Marvin is loathsome and Smithers (in his first big role) is solid.  Kudos to Eddie Albert (a war hero, as were Palance and Marvin) for daringly playing against type.  John Wayne would have never accepted a role like that and he was not even a veteran.  The supporting cast includes Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, and Richard F’in Jaeckel (of course).  If you are of my generation, you will feel very comfortable watching this movie.  

The combat scenes are fairly good for a play, but you’ll remember the dialogue more than the action. The combat is realistic and the deaths are random. The movie blends violence and exposition well.  There are some good lines.  There is some good comic relief in the film, mostly from Strauss. None from Palance. 

If your heart goes out to the officers instead of the enlisted men, you might not enjoy this movie.  It is not so much anti-war as it is anti-brass.  It tends to be moralistic in its anti-authority theme.  Other themes include;  the military is like politics, the higher up you go the more corrupt the officers are, and following orders can really suck.  This movie makes you wonder if blind obedience to orders is a good policy. But it also shows that American soldiers would sometimes take matters into their own hands.  Contrast that to the relationship of German soldiers to their officers. The movie anticipates “fragging” in the Vietnam War. Released in 1956, it was a harbinger of the 60’s wave of modern war films like “The War Lover” and “Hell Is For Heroes.”

 Check out that poster. Pulling a grenade pin with your teeth is an unrealistic cliche, but Jack Palance was definitely capable of doing that.