"Hell is for Heroes" is a 1962 WWII film directed by Don Siegel. As many who has taking dives into Siegel's filmography, he always has that jack-of-all-trades ability with film abound him, taking on studio efforts as they come in whatever genre is needed. Although he holds that energy of a studio director, he has an ethos abound him to make more out of the conventional product given to him, which is very much the case of "Hell Is for Heroes". Hell Is for Heroes" feels like it is something of an older model war film but then also holds a bit of a mentality for the change of pace that we would see in the later 1960s and especially 1970s war film. It holds that older studio system battalion like focus on a retailing of a certain battle (in this case the 95th Infantry fighting along the German Siegfried Line), but we start to also start to see the characterized grit in the soldiers starting to form rather that the older personality soldier showcasing motif that seems to be present in the 1950s or earlier. It is sort of somewhat hard to really clarify what I mean because there is always personality of platoon in war films like this, but I guess I am trying to say that there is a tonal sliding scale of grittiness that came to be in 1960s that took over wholeheartedly in the 1970's, and "Hell Is for Heroes" can easily be looked at as one of the earlier films exemplifying this. Much of that inducement is Steve McQueen in a centralized role. There is some detail that the more clean-cut Bobby Darin was originally the main character of the film, which would hold a formulated bit like war films of old. Steve McQueen now on board and gaining main bill led to less connective personality hijinks of the solider at war in tandem with battle to a more "let's get to the point" feeling which really paid off. There is a slight bit of balance of this in the film, held to the appropriate amount as we get Bob Newhart as PFC James Driscoll making comedic quandaries to higher command on the battlefield about the soldiers seeing "Road to Morrocco" (1942) too many times in a row and getting restless with the film choices. Even though Darin and McQueen didn't see eye to eye, a cranky McQueen gave the film excellent tone with just the right amount of Newhart comedy as a pallet cleanser throughout. Ultimately, far more advantageous and epic war film would come about, but "Hell Is for Heroes" is not only an excitable product for what it's worth, but it holds excellent value of showcase the change of trend in with character demeanor. For that it is absolutely worth viewing.
