DVD/Blu Ray review: Attack! (1956)

Robert Aldrich’s dramatic study in military heroism and cowardice in battle. Jack Palance represents the gutsy hero while Eddie Albert is the jittery coward. And Attack! features either actor at somewhere near his best.

Now on blu ray from Kino Lorber, Attack! offers a cold, cynical approach to military combat, something that wasn’t done in films at that time. Jack Palance is Lieutenant Joe Costa who is at odds with Eddie Albert’s Captain Cooney. Cooney is a desk clerk whose promotion was due to a childhood friend (Lee Marvin) who is Lieutenant Colonel. Cooney’s father wields highly influential political that the Lt Col believes may be beneficial to him upon his discharge. Thus, he defends Cooney when his cowardly actions result in several men being killed. Costa is outraged and eventually must decide whether or not to kill Cooney himself.

Because of the way it looks at the military and presents these diversely negative personalities, Attack! received no cooperation from the armed forces, and took a beating from critics who were offended by the film’s dark attitude. The film received no assistance from the Defense Department. Director Aldrich told Arthur Knight in a 1956 issue of Saturday Review: "The Army saw the script and promptly laid down a policy of no cooperation, which not only meant that I couldn't borrow troops and tanks for my picture--I couldn't even get a look at Signal Corps combat footage. I finally had to buy a tank for $1,000 and rent another from 20th Century-Fox."

Receiving nowhere near the funding offered most period war pictures, Attack! was shot in just over a month on the RKO backlot. And the casting of Eddie Albert as the coward was daring, because in reality he was a war hero who was awarded the Bronze Star. However, Albert was intrigued by the role as being very different from his as a person, and from the roles he’d played for years in many movies. It is one of the actor’s finest performances.

Jack Palance and Lee Marvin are much more comfortable in roles that were not against type for either actor, Marvin getting the edge for playing a manipulative self-serving officer who is willing to sacrifice soldiers’ lives in the hands of an incompetent leader if it will later advance him socially. The cast is rounded out with familiar and welcome actors like Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, and Buddy Ebsen. Yep, Jed Clampett and Oliver Wendell Douglas in the same war picture years before their similarly cornball TV shows.

Kino Lober’s blu ray is excellent, but sans the usual extras we have come to expect. Only a theatrical trailer is included.

Still, the movie is a very daring and aesthetically successful venture that has held up a lot better than many pretentious epics that became critical darlings.

The blu ray is available here: Attack!