Is THIS The Most Underrated WW2 Movie Ever?

Why Attack Is A Forgotten '50s Classic

Despite its qualities and Aldrich's respected place in the canon of post-war Hollywood cinema, Attack has fallen to the periphery in conversations surrounding the war movie greats of the fifties and sixties. To some degree, this is inevitable. During those decades, the only genre that could out-compete the war picture in terms of frequency was the Western, which also has its own smorgasbord of undiscovered or otherwise overlooked gems from that era that deserve greater recognition. (Major Dundee, anyone?) It also arrived in between more noteworthy assignments for its biggest star, Lee Marvin, namely The Big Heat, Bad Day at Black Rock, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the latter of which is widely considered alongside Point Blank to be his greatest starring turn.

With it being lost amidst the glut of war films from Hollywood's Golden Age and beyond, as well as Marvin's other successes, Attack remains something of a forgotten classic - a film that not only exemplified Aldrich's unique qualities as a director, but also those of its leading men. Marvin, who had served as a scout sniper in the Pacific, was well on his way to becoming one of the greats of the New Hollywood era, but Attack was one of the first films to enable the actor to channel his wartime experiences.

Marvin was known to provide technical advice on the war pictures he worked on, and Attack was presumably no exception. He exudes authenticity in the role of Bartlett, while Palance - who had been discharged from USAAF following a traumatic crash while piloting his B-24 Liberator on a training exercise - conveys a sense of wartime despair as Costa in a way only someone who had endured those years could. Eddie Albert - who had himself been a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist - also saw action at the Battle of Tarawa. This is to say that while Aldrich's film may have been rooted in allegory, there's a raw layer of believability that seeps into every frame.

Add to that Attack's technical prowess, its emotional heft and efficiency, and it becomes difficult to describe it as anything but a genre highlight from the post-war period. It may not have had all the bells and whistles as the most acclaimed war films from its day, but it didn't need them. Aldrich made something one of a kind instead - a boxed-in drama with a suffocating atmosphere, and one that deserves a far greater legacy.