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Rating:  - the best
One of the five best war movies
ever made, in my opinion.
Everyone, Palance, Albert,
Lee Marvin, turn in superior
acting performances. Recall
this movie was made only
11 years after the end of
WW II, and that both Palance
and Marvin saw combat action.
Their experiences seemed to
bring an air of authenticity
to the tense, nail biting drama.
Excellent movie.
Rating:  - A violent and very effective war melodrama!
'Attack' is a violent exposure of cowardice and corruption among American officers fighting the Germans in Belgium... The film shows far less interest in America's war against Germany than in the fatal conflict between an embittered, idealist soldier and his cowardly superior...
Robert Aldrich said that his main argument was not the usual 'war is hell,' but the terribly corrupting influence you can have in the most normal, average human beings, and what terrible things it makes them capable of that they wouldn't be capable of otherwise.
The hero, Lieutenant Joe Costa (Jack Palance), is a tall, gaunt man from whom war has scraped away all the social graces... He suffers the injustices but cannot judge them... He seems strong, straightforward, but completely disillusioned...
Corruption is Captain Erskine Cooney (Eddie Albert), the company commander... He is a cowardly sadist captain who holds power because his father is a political bigwig back home, and because Colonel Clive Bartlett (Lee Marvin), has political aspiration... Marvin portrays the cynical superior officer who treats war as a political game, mindless of the sufferings of the ordinary soldier...
Palance and Albert play, at high-tension hysteria, two officers who clash on the battlefield...
The film opens with a squad being wiped out in an advance assault on an enemy position... Back at the company HQ a seething Palance confronts Albert: 'You double cross me. You play the gutless wonder just once more and I'll come back and I'll get you, Cooney.'
The skin is scraped away, leaving the raw fibers of hurt men... Touch it and you scream... Palance is going to rip Cooney apart, no going through proper channels, no intriguing, a direct, gut response: 'I'll shove this grenade down your throat and pull the pin.'
Despite its inevitable fondness for the dramatic values of combat and the savagery of men at arms, 'Attack!' is a violent and very effective war melodrama, even though by the end we seem to be in the company of raving lunatics rather than soldiers...
Rating: - Good old fashioned war drama
This sounds like one of those routine war movies -- brave unit leader having problems with a cowardly superior just as the enemy launches a major offensive. But what sets "Attack!" apart from the others is its great cast and director Robert Aldrich's masterful handling of a story derived from a stage play.
Jack Palance is the tough lieutenant who has been let down once too often by his drunken and cowardly captain (Eddie Albert) just ahead of an attack by the Germans. Taking it up with their commanding officer (Lee Marvin) is no use as he is covering Albert's back because he is the son of an influential judge back home.
Matters come to a head when Albert sends Palance's unit head-first into a town crawling with Germans and then refuses to send in more troops to help them. You just know that a major confrontation is coming up, and its one heck of a ride getting there, thanks largely to the fine acting by Palance, Marvin, Albert and the bit players like Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel and Buddy Ebsen.
The US Army reportedly extended no cooperation to Aldrich after reading the hard-hitting script, and this movie was shot on the backlot with a shoe-string budget. Aldrich had only two tanks for his big action scenes, but none of these constraints show up on the screen. The action scenes help open up the movie and broaden its stage play origins.
The film isn't without the usual war movie problems, like the stereotypical evil Nazis and SS troops, but the such problems are few and far between.
Palance is in terrific form, carrying the picture on his broad shoulders. If ever proof was needed that the guy could act, this movie delivers it in spades. His character is no hero -- just a guy doing his job the best he can.
Lee Marvin turns in a strong performance too, and Eddie Albert is perfect as the cowardly captain, especially considering the fact that he was a real life war hero. But the real star is director Aldrich, who keeps things moving along at a nice clip.
The DVD serves up "Attack!" in all its black and white splendour...the print is good with little evidence of wear and tear. The soundtrack is a nice solid mono. A great thinking person's war movie.
Rating: - Another Powerful Aldrich Dissection of Male Potency
War as an opportunity to make commercial and social profit against trying to get the job done and staying alive at the same time. Palance is the scariest bastard in the European theatre of war, and seems to have nine lives. He only leaves this Earth by having his soul ripped from it: his death-face is one of the most terrifying in all cinema. This is Palance as an almost unstoppable force of nature, but who's still recognisably human because he so obviously cares about his men. But he also hates in equal measure. The class difference between himself, Eddie Albert and Lee Marvin makes for an obvious Marxist reading, summed-up in the film's final sequence. But this is also a penetrating study in machismo. As such, one can see this as the third film in Aldrich's trilogy (along with Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Knife) of studies of powerful but flawed men who seek meaning within an amoral universe. Indeed, Aldrich might be the most trenchant analyst of the late fifties American male hero.
The DVD falls short on extras, but the print is good.
Rating: - greatest career movie roles for Palance and Albert
Not a perfect film, (I'll rate this a 4.55 star)nor well-known, `Attack' is one of the most gripping WWII movies, for its story of conflict within an American unit, and for the outstanding performances by Jack Palance and Eddie Albert.
'Attack' was not popular because it showed an ugly side of war that no American wanted to acknowldege: the war where your most hated enemy is your own incompetent commanding officer.
Palance plays a tough, brave, sensitive and virile lieutenant; a dedicated American GI who's seen too many good soldiers die needlessly.
Albert, his CO, is a cowardly, weak, and weasely drunkard, the son-of-an-important-guy-back-home. His portrayal was so effective I loathed Albert for decades afterward.
Palance plays his part better than most actors could, with tension and conflict oozing from his pores. Some reviewers mistake Palance's performance of a seething, panting, frustrated man as over-acting. I saw Palance as effectively trying to keep all his conflicted emotions bottled up while being torn apart between his duty as an American officer and his human duty to protect his men from his incompetent CO.
Doesn't matter if it's in black & white,the tanks are wrong, or there are no big Special FX. This film is about the war between Good and Not Good Enough.
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