Steve McQueen is the surly, drunken misfit in a vulnerable U.S. Infantry squad positioned near Germany's impregnable Siegfried Line in the autumn of 1944. Ordered to defend a thinly-wooded area near a German pillbox, the outfit suffers an agonizing 48 hours masking the fact of their small numbers while waiting for reinforcements.
In The Shootist, Don Siegel examines the ironies of heroism from a deliberate distance; Hell Is for Heroes is a more typical Siegel approach to the same study: fast-paced, powerful, and pessimistic. As in his police films, in which the thin line between cop and killer is made thinner by the anti-social heroics of the cop, in this World War II saga McQueen's renegade violence makes him more than a threat to his community: it makes him a hero. More than an anti-war statement - war is for heroes; war is hell; hell is for heroes - the title suggests Siegel's ironic slant on the stuff of which heroes are made. (J.B.)