ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

Steineded How sad is this?

Console best movie i've ever seen.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Leofwine_draca ATTACK! is a decent WW2 film made in a decade inundated with similar-looking pictures. It was an early feature in the career of director Robert Aldrich, who lends the film a touch of class missing in some of the cheaper genre efforts. The one thing that makes this film really stand out, though, is the effort to characterise the main players, rather than simply emphasising the action.This is just as much a psychological thriller as it is a war film. For a lot of the running time, the characters are holed up in single locations and fighting each other rather than the enemy. The battle of wills between hero Jack Palance and coward Eddie Albert is quite electrifying, building to some truly nail-biting scenes at the climax that buzz and crackle with power. You don't often get to experience that in war films.Palance is the real stand-out in this movie, finally getting the chance to play the hero after years of imposing henchman-type roles. He conveys his character's anguish very well and the bit where he tackles a couple of German tanks is incredible. Albert is well cast as his foe, and the likes of Lee Marvin, Robert Strauss, and Peter Van Eyck supply good supporting turns. ATTACK! is a film I'm surprised people don't know better because it's very impressive.

tomsview I always remembered this intense war film with its blazing performances ever since I saw it in the late 50's.During the fighting in Europe in 1944, tensions run high in a company of U.S. infantryman when the cowardice of the company commander, Captain Cooney (Eddie Albert), cause losses among his men. One of his platoon leaders, Lieutenant Costa (Jack Palance), threatens to kill him if he costs the life of one more man. But Cooney has the protection of his commanding officer, Colonel Bartlett (Lee Marvin), who hails from the same hometown. Everything comes to a head during a German counterattack.It would be carping to find too much technical fault with this film, despite a small budget it looks good and the military action seems convincing, although the Russell Ranch used for the outdoor scenes seems about as open as the Russian Steppes.Much is made of the fact that the unit involved is from the National Guard, which carries issues from the region back home in which it was raised, especially the relationship between Cooney and Bartlett. Of all the WW2 films from that time, "Between Heaven and Hell" starring Robert Wagner is the only other one I can think of where this was also a subject (Buddy Ebsen was in both films).The internal conflict drives "Attack" as Cooney and Costa go over the edge with stunning performances from Palance and Albert.Costa, although not without fear, overcomes it with a sense of responsibility to his men and the mission. Cooney on the other hand has never won the battle against fear; the way he makes excuses for his failures is wince-inducing.The most balanced soldier is Lieutenant Woodruff who does his duty, but also has the moral courage to stand up for what he believes in – maybe he best represents those ordinary men who stuck to the job and won the war.Eddie Albert actually served with distinction in WW2. "Attack" was made just 10-years after the war, and a number of the cast had served in the conflict: Jack Palance and Lee Marvin of course, but also Buddy Ebsen (Coast Guard), Richard Jaeckel (Merchant Marine) and Peter van Eyck (U.S. Army) – many of the staff behind the camera would also have served.I think when we watch movies from that era; it adds another dimension knowing this. Those people invested a great deal of equity into films such as "Attack". In a way, WW2 movies from that period can never be remade with that same level of involvement.

Prismark10 Robert Aldrich brings this grim story set in the latter stages of World War 2 and conflict in a battalion where Captain Cooney sends men on a mission but is too cowardly to bail them out with firepower as he does not want to die.The film stars Jack Palance as the tougher subordinate Costa who has seen through Eddie Albert's cowardly and drunk Captain Cooney who has used his family connections with Lee Marvin's Lt Colonel Bartlett to get himself a nice number but finds himself out of his depth and quickly losing the respect of his men.From the opening scenes, filmed in a studio back-lot of RKO you can sense this is a low budget film. What we have is a film with some of cinema's hard men Marvin and Palance (both to be future Oscar winners) slightly playing against type. Palance is a good guy here, the platoon leader cynical about his masters. You can see ingrained in his face that he is battle worn, battle weary and sick of his superiors treating his men like some disposal commodity.Marvin plays an effective cameo. He knows Cooney is inept, he has known him for years and he a lot to be thankful to Cooney's father. When Marvin goes back home after the war he needs his father's patronage. Maybe he really did feel in the heat of battle either Cooney will man up, get killed by the enemy or even by one of his own men.William Smithers plays Lt Woodruff torn between his loyalty to Costa and dislike of Cooney but bound not to rock the boat but raises his concerns with Bartlett, but Bartlett dismisses his concerns as he has his own agenda.As the film is an adaptation of a stage play, it does have too many stereotypes and rather one dimensional ones. Robert Strauss is there for broad comic relief for example.Only Smithers comes across as conflicted where his plea to save Costa and his men when they go on a mission are rebuffed by Cooney and feels he has nowhere else to turn.The climax of the film comes across as weak and preachy. The conflict with the German tanks does not look well staged and the incident with Costa falls victim to censorship laws where the violence had to be toned down.I felt that the ending need to be punchier and more to the point which the showdown between Smithers and Marvin failed to bring.Its still a film with some powerhouse performances and a good contrast to the more gung ho war films of the time.

tieman64 Released in 1956, "Attack!" was part of a group of war films which began the drift away from the more patriotic fare of the 40s and early 50s ("Halls of Montezuma", "Sands of Iwo Jima", "Objective Burma", "Bataan", "Back to Bataan", "Guadalacanal Diary", "Battleground", "Destination Tokyo", "Retreat, Hell!", "They Were Expendable", "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", "Sergeant York" etc) and toward more contemplative, anti-war fare like "Paths of Glory", "Porkchop Hill" and three underrated foreign flicks, "Ballad of a Soldier", "The Cranes are Flying" and "Fires on the Plain".In other words, WW2 (and the Korean War) was over and the finger pointing began. Problem is, film-makers didn't know which way to point the finger. "Attack!", like "The Caine Mutiny" two years prior, takes aim at villainous Colonels and cowardly Captains, but ultimately this is a film which exalts military values. Soldiers must fight for "their brothers", being cowardly is a "detriment to your comrades", the military "punishes bad eggs", honour, self-sacrifice and patriotism are "virtues to strive for" and the "never leave a buddy behind" ethos is celebrated at every turn. War, in other words, is stripped of all political or ideological motives and becomes an almost cult like blood sacrifice. Some believe these films, because they are "anti romantic" and "gory", to be anti-war, but in fact they are an absolute paean to military values (and blood/violence is itself a form of romance).Incidentally, this film ends with an infantry battle in a bombed-out town. Many find "Saving Private Ryan's" final town battle to be remarkable, but virtually every war movie in the 40s and 50s ended with either a town battle or a battle on a bridge. Spielberg crams both Alamo clichés into the end of his film. 7/10 – Jack Palance and Robert Aldrich made a number of films together, this being one of their better efforts. Nevertheless, though Palance and Lee Marvin are a blast to watch, "Attack!", like most war films, is simply intellectually dishonest. "Paths of Glory", "Ballad of a Soldier", "The Cranes are flying" and "Fires on the Plain", all released in the 50s, deal with this subject in a much better way.Worth one viewing.