Friday, 21 September 2018

Too Late The Hero | Robert Aldrich, 1970




Too Late The Hero | Robert Aldrich, 1970

A reckless army captain quickly devises and actions a plan of attack, designed to emphasise his own bravery and intellect with no thought to strategy or his orders. His men protest to determinedly deaf ears. His plan is simple but fraught with danger: he walks alone into the radio hut of a Japanese military camp, nonchalantly to avoid suspicion ("if he does see me, he's likely to assume I'm one of his chaps"), and takes out the Japanese radio operator. Then, when the coast is clear, a British radio operator follows him in and sends a vital message of warning back to base. Once this message is sent, they all walk out undetected.

The captain arrives at the hut. Aldrich cuts quickly from a close up of the captain's eye in the crack of the door to a mid-shot of the hut's interior, before cutting back to a mid-shot of the captain as he walks inside to take out the operator. This all occurs in less than a second, yet in this time he has moved from outside to inside. The cut moves faster than time and the action seems rushed. Something suddenly feels inexplicably wrong, but everything is going according to plan. Time grinds to a halt as the captain stands alone in enemy territory. Doubt creeps in. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.