Too Late the Hero
With Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Henry Fonda.
US, 1970, 35mm, color, 133 min.
Print source: Disney
Aldrich’s third independently produced feature after The Dirty Dozen’s success was also its moody cousin, trading brash hysterics for verbose self-reckoning and toughly considered moral quagmires. Too Late the Hero’s action centers on a Pacific island during WWII, but the palm trees, administrative miscalculations and dubious suicidal missions situate the film most unmistakably in the post-Vietnam climate of righteous fury. Cliff Robertson and Michael Caine costar as a US lieutenant and a British soldier ordered, against their wishes, to conduct a raid on a Japanese communications base. In Aldrich’s hands, the deadly assignment occasions both prideful overcompensations and cowardly backpedalling, while the alleged enemy winds up being the most civilized of the bunch.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Four Star Playhouse: The Squeeze, The Witness and The Hard Way
The Southerner
