Too Late the Hero (1970) was directed by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen, Attack!) and stars Cliff Robertson (The Naked and the Dead, PT 109) and Denholm Elliott (They Who Dare, A Bridge too Far), with a short appearance by Henry Fonda.

But mainly it stars Michael Caine (A Bridge too Far, The Battle of Britain, Play Dirty).

Caine is my favorite World War II movie actor. Too Late the Hero is nowhere near my favorite Michael Caine World War II movie, but it is one of my favorite performances of his. In a review of the movie Gambit, Andrew Saris of the Village Voice wrote, “Caine continues providing the divine function of a star in redeeming bad movies from deserved oblivion.” This is what he does in Too Late the Hero.

This film might deserve oblivion without Caine lifting it up—yet he does. He’s always engaging and committed, and to be fair, he’s given a role with some complexity; his character brings up interesting questions and makes interesting, though not always clearly motivated, decisions—he  is the heart of the film in every sense of the word. He is as cynical, as selfish and as caring for his fellow man as any character in the film, and watching him negotiate these attitudes is entertaining.

Caine’s performance leaves me to wonder what I would think of the film if Cliff Robertson was as good as Caine is in the film. I don’t see why anyone would like or root for Robertson’s character; he is immediately established as selfish and uncommitted to the war effort, but he is not in any way charming or sympathetic. Neither Robertson nor his character are as cool as they think they are. When we first see him, he’s sleeping/ lounging/ passed out on a beach with a bottle of beer beside him; he’s surly, privileged and entirely too casual.

He wanders into meet with his superior officer (Henry Fonda) and is slouchy and over familiar until he hears he is going into combat, which he then petulantly refuses to do, trying to talk his commander out of it until he finally appears to realize he’s in the military and has to obey orders. Caine’s character in Play Dirty has a similar scene, yet Caine’s character stands at attention and reasonably quickly understands the whole “I’m in the army and have to obey orders” thing.

You can make all the Vietnam era cynicism arguments about this movie that you like–Robertson lacks charm or appeal–we don’t like him, so we don’t support his casual and nearly total insubordination. Caine’s character may rival him in cynicism; however, he is far less selfish and has significantly more charm. Even when, during a mission briefing, he asks if the mission would be aborted if Robertson’s character were to suffer an “unfortunate mishap,” he’s significantly more charming.

The movie itself is flawed, as they say. The combat scenes sometimes lack clear geography, and whether a character is wounded, killed or survives is always a function of plot instead of any sort of reality surrounding combat. If the plot calls for one Japanese soldier to survive an ambush, he does.

The main attack on a Japanese outpost is reasonably well done and exciting, though Robertson’s dilemma in the middle of it isn’t compelling or convincing–we don’t care about him enough to care about his dilemma, which doesn’t really seem like a dilemma anyway. But too much of the movie is soldiers walking through dense jungle debating exactly how important their own self interests are.

In the middle of this debate is Eliot as the hapless captain—the useless lieutenant who happens to be a captain in this instance. He has no aptitude for combat or leadership and is leading a group of men into combat.

In one early scene the plot calls for some of the British soldiers to die in an ambush in order to establish the captain’s lack of competence and Caine’s compassion and two Japanese soldiers to be living yet wounded, to give different characters a chance to react to the killing of prisoners. The next combat requires one British soldier to be wounded severely enough to live but be unable to move forward, so we can look at that question, and so he can provide another complication later.

And none of this is particularly surprising because the movie moves towards an inevitable conclusion of the two heroes, who are not heroes—or are they now?—faced with some sort of heroic decision that the title and our familiarity with movies makes obvious. Strangely, I have a deep commitment to not spoiling movies while firmly believing that this movie is almost entirely predictable.

The thing that saves this movie from oblivion is that it is not entirely predictable. Caine’s character, in particular, has depths that Caine shows us and is an interesting mix of self-interest and commitment to his fellow soldiers.

His fellow soldiers are a mix of cynical stereotypes and Red Shirts. but the individual performances are solid. Ian Bannen (The Hill, The Inglorious Bastards) and Ronald Fraser (The Best of Enemies) are strong in their roles, but I don’t care about them or about Robertson’s character. He’s a jerk, and the point of the movie appears to be to make him less of a jerk—to make him a hero, and I don’t know if I care what happens to him, and I don’t know if I blame him or the script because I don’t care about anyone except Caine’s character because Caine is an actor who can transcend a mediocre script to give a performance that leaves me interested in what he will do.

You could watch Too Late the Hero and might enjoy it—unless you find it a little unrealistic or obvious, but Michael Caine gives a performance that is worth watching.

Recommendation

You could do a lot worse than buying this film–but you could do a lot better.

In terms of Michael Caine World War II movies, these are better: