Too Late the Hero

Aldrich tries the Dirty Dozen formula again. This time the setting is the Pacific sector in World War II, and the premise has a band of reluctant heroes required to get from one end of a Jap-infested island to the other in order to transmit a decoy message (hopefully to distract attention from the US fleet). Along with some wry reflections on class and officer-like qualities, fairly predictable anti-war sentiments are aired by Caine and Robertson as the two main protagonists, rubbing national hostilities off each other and chiefly concerned with saving their own skins. The usual collection of cowards, bullies and wimps go along for the trip, but there are some excellent character sketches (Denholm Elliott and Ian Bannen, in particular), the action has its moments (with the patrol's paranoia fed by taunting messages from Japanese loudspeakers hidden in the jungle), and the bantering dialogue is often very funny.