Too Late the Hero

With his most ambitious war film, Aldrich and his producers hoped to replicate the success of "The Dirty Dozen"; instead, it became a veritable flop that sealed the fate of Aldrich Studios and remains one of the director’s overlooked masterpieces. A U.S. lieutenant (Cliff Robertson) is assigned as a Japanese translator to a British unit in the New Hebrides to take part in a dangerous mission. His pragmatism proves just as inadequate as the cynicism of medic Hearne (Michael Caine) as the operation spirals into disaster through a series of deeply ironic twists. The nihilistic poetry of the opening credits—the flags of the participating nations flying proudly in the wind before shredding apart in fast motion—heralds the consequences of Aldrich’s dismantling of any notion of heroism: war as a treacherous system. (C.H.)