Sometimes your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness. Writer Laurence Marks excelled at keeping the Heroes' capers plausible, portraying the Germans overall as a formidable foe, and injecting humor into the narrative. It was a tricky juggling act, and with "Operation Briefcase," Marks inevitably dropped a ball.
Make no mistake: the storyline is not only a weighty one efficiently told, it is rooted in fact. The Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit under Colonel Hogan operating covertly from Luft-Stalag 13 commanded by Colonel Klink, receive orders to deliver a briefcase bomb to turncoat German General Stauffen (Oscar Beregi) as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
In July 1944, Oberst (Colonel) Claus von Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb at Hitler's staff meeting that wounded Hitler in the failed coup d'etat to wrest control of Nazi Germany from him; von Stauffenberg was executed quickly afterward as were nearly 5000 others eventually including national hero Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (who was allowed to commit suicide). (The 2008 movie "Valkyrie" attempts to dramatize this landmark event.)
Marks establishes the gravity of the operation right away. A courier is wounded and dies while delivering the briefcase to the Heroes. When he gives the briefcase to Stauffen, Hogan expresses approval of the plot but rebukes Stauffen for allowing Hitler to come to power in the first place. And when Sergeant Schultz inadvertently activates the timer bomb, the race is on to deactivate it before it (ahem) blows the operation.
Amidst such seriousness, the comic elements feel incongruous and contrived, such as Sergeant Carter's engaging a camp guard to help look for his "pet mouse Felix" as the distraction to enable Corporal LeBeau and Sergeant Kinchloe to slip Hogan the briefcase to give to Stauffen. Moreover, Marks uses his standard ploy of Hogan somehow persuading Klink to approve, condone, or ignore actions that would immediately arouse suspicion but are necessary to his operation, usually the weakest link in the Marks chain; this time, it is to allow him to accompany Schultz on the search for "escaped" POWs Carter and LeBeau let loose as part of the attempt to warn Stauffen about the now-live bomb.
Smartly executing Marks's typically polished script, director Gene Reynolds keeps the interest high and the action credible; nevertheless, he prompts the question that always hovers over the very premise of "Hogan's Heroes": How dramatic can a situation comedy get before it finally drops a ball?
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