It sounded great: Another Robert Aldrich tough-guy war film. But Too Late the Hero has mostly mutiny on its mind, and in Lukas Heller's script there's no room for non-cynical attitudes. Cliff Robertson's lieutenant is incensed that he has to go anywhere near a battle front, and behaves like a snooty athletic star in front of a captain played by Henry Fonda. Since Fonda carries himself like an admiral, this scene never seems quite right. The British are a kind of sub - Bridge on the River Kwai cross-section of types. Harry Andrews is the tough Colonel, Denholm Elliott the "jolly good," over-polite Captain, and Caine and company a borderline-mutinous bunch of layabouts. Ronald Fraser and Ian Bannen, both from Aldrich's The Flight of the Phoenix are excellent, but we can tell that most of the others are there to be picked off one by one in various skirmishes with the Japanese.

As lost patrol movies go the bulk of Too Late the Hero isn't bad, although its complete negativity couldn't have been reassuring to 1970 audiences with relatives in Vietnam. An ambush on a trail results in Hornsby's men shooting each other. Most of the soldiers are thinking of ways to abort the mission before they're all killed. One even asks if the mission will have to be cancelled, should the Yank Japanese expert meet with an accident.

The movie bogs down with good scenes we expect (various ambushes) and awkward scenes we don't expect. Japanese guest star Ken Takakura (The Yakuza) broadcasts surrender offers to the Brits over a system of wired loudspeakers that seem to cover twenty miles of jungle trail. The Japanese never see fit to simply cut the Allied patrol off, even when they're separated by only a few hundred yards. There's always time for an argument or other dialogue scene before the action restarts. When Takakura is revealed as a reasonably civilized foe, we don't have any particular reaction.

Likewise, the important "big mission" turns out to be the last thing our heroic soldiers are thinking about, as all they want to do is survive. The actual literal meaning of the film's title is a blur. It's obviously trying to be ironic but it escapes me just the same. We know what kind of picture we're watching when the title sequence shows American, Japanese and British flags decomposing into rags across a series of lap dissolves.

MGM's DVD of Too Late the Hero is one of their releases of an ABC holding through Buena Vista (No explanation has surfaced for the arrangement). The pleasingly enhanced 1:85 image looks good but not great throughout. The IMDB says that there were 70mm stereophonic prints made of the film but the track here appears to be mono.

The only extra is a loud trailer that stresses the film's action.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Too Late the Hero rates:
Movie: Good ---
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: June 5, 2004