TOO LATE THE HERO  again sees Cliff Robertson battling the Emperor of Japan, in the same latitude as his 1959 mission-misfire Battle Of The Coral Sea, this time in the New Hebrides (think Vanuatu, for you Survivor fans), way up in budget, and with assistance from Michael Caine.  No planter dames this mission, and Caine’s not much help either, as he and his bickering Brit mates resent the Yank, their officers, each other, being there, the 20th-century, you name it.  Vietnam Era sensibilities infect this 1970 slog, aimlessly directed by Robert Aldrich, who was not happy with Cliff or the picture.

“Six months from now, they’ll still be where they are, and we’ll still be where we are. Getting ourselves killed isn’t going to make any difference to anyone except us.”

1942. British troops who escaped the debacle at Singapore share an island in the New Hebrides with a Japanese garrison, which includes an air base. They occasionally mix it up with skirmishes but mostly keep to their own sides of the island. When the Japanese radio outposts threaten to detect an approaching American convoy, the brass send in reluctant ‘Lt. Sam Lawson’ (Robertson, 46), a naval officer who speaks Japanese. Working under foolhardy ‘Capt. Hornsby’ (Denholm Elliott), who is detested by his men, Lawson and a patrol move into the thick jungle to knock out the station and try to get back alive. Among the team the one with the most sense—and one of the worst attitudes—is Cockney cynic ‘Tosh Hearns’ (Michael Caine, 36), the medic.

A variation on the venerable ‘Lost Patrol’ trope, it was shot in The Philippines, some around Subic Bay, much on the stunner island of Boracay,  but so little is made of the locations by Aldrich and cameraman Joseph Biroc they might have saved airfares and done it in Florida.  Caine said it was the worst location shoot of his career.  A huge money loser, making a pitiful $1,590,000 against a budget in excess of $6,250,000, it’s a grind, overlong at 134 minutes, a visually unattractive and unpleasant passage to bitterness with a bunch of sourball characters, bad company to sit sweat with, even if they’re well acted.

Solid types back the star duo: Elliott is very good at being off-his-nut, Ian Bannen, war movie standbys Harry Andrews and Percy Herbert are at home and there’s a prestige cameo from Henry Fonda, bawling out the Robertson character. A major star in Japan, Ken Takakura makes his international bow as a crafty intelligence officer. Doing roles similar to those they aced for Aldrich in The Flight Of The Phoenix are Ian Bannen and Ronald Fraser. Others on hand include Lance Percival, Sam Jydd and Don Knight. Robertson is okay (the character poorly conceived, which doesn’t help), everyone else is very good, but the implausible story and script are a crock, the editing is jumpy and there’s a badly misjudged music score from Gerald Fried. The advertising posters feature some island beauty (unknown Filipino actress) and there were publicity stills featuring her with Caine, but either the material ended up on the cutting room floor or was just tease stuff for advertising. Oh, and the Japanese didn’t land in the New Hebrides. *

* Aldrich movies are always on the harsh side, and his action movies are unflinching–westerns Vera Cruz and Ulzana’s Raid and WW2 sagas Attack, The Angry Hills and the classic The Dirty Dozen, but this downer, which he co-wrote with Lukas Heller, feels surplus and derivative. Heller (who also wrote The Dirty Dozen) put up that Too Late the Hero  “was an illustration of [Aldrich’s] enormous failings as a writer, and to some extent as a director. It was terribly elaborate. To get the dramatic conflict that he wanted to establish, there had to be so many convolutions of plot, so many situations that had to be explained. It seemed to me a tremendously self-conscious examination of heroism.”