Jungle Rot

War may be getting a bad name, but it still pays at the box office. Ask Director Robert Aldrich. His 1967 movie The Dirty Dozen made millions by drafting a gang of incorrigible convicts into a mission behind enemy lines. Too Late the Hero is a kind of sequel to The Dirty Dozen, based once again on a World War II suicide mission.

The patrol's commanding officer (Denholm Elliott) is a well-bred British fumbler who keeps getting his men bushwhacked on an island in the South Pacific. The cynic-in-residence is a cool-eyed cockney medic (Michael Caine), who alternates between bandaging the wounded and needling his commander. A reluctant Japanese-language specialist seconded from the American Navy (Cliff Robertson) is straight out of The Bridge on the River Kwai; he becomes the company pragmatist who is determined only to save his own neck. The rest of the motley crew consists of bellyaching foot soldiers (Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser, Lance Percival, Percy Herbert) whose only function is to keep the humor flying by calling each other "nits" and "fairies," and to get killed.

The most aggravating thing about Too Late the Hero is that Aldrich is a film maker of some accomplishment. He possesses a strong sense of atmosphere and characterization, and his actors all perform with roistering energy. Fraser whines expertly as a craven Scotsman, and Elliott proves once again that he is one of the most accomplished character actors at work in films today. Robertson gives his role just the right mixture of dumb impudence and shrewd calculation. And then there is Caine, an extraordinarily good performer with an apparent weakness for taking any role that comes along. Despite his mighty skills both as a dramatic actor and comedian (AIfie, The Magus, Gambit), his talent is in danger of being blunted by too many appearances in too many hapless exercises like Too Late the Hero. Movies like this, after all, can be just as wearing on an actor as on an audience.

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