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#251 - The Dirty Dozen
Robert Aldrich, 1967
In 1944, an Army major is made to undertake a top-secret mission that involves the use of a dozen dangerous convicts.
The Dirty Dozen almost seems quaint by today's standards with an implausible high concept that wouldn't seem out-of-place in a Michael Bay movie. The premise involves Lee Marvin's hard-ass Army major being made to assemble a team of convicted American soldiers for a suicide mission against a chateau full of German officers ahead of the D-Day invasion. The convicts themselves are of course a colourful and difficult group of characters whose obvious problem with authority makes training them for their mission so challenging that at least two-thirds of this 150-minute movie is spent setting them up for the mission. Of course, it helps that the cast is populated by a bunch of recognisable old-school actors, each playing some fairly basic yet amusing action movie stereotypes with considerable gusto. The disparate personalities clash frequently and make for good interpersonal conflict throughout the film even as the group learns to function as a unit - this helps to keep the film's first half sufficiently interesting.
The action doesn't start in earnest until the second half, with a training exercise followed by the mission proper, but both examples demonstrate considerable competence when it comes to staging action sequences that are both high-tension and high-octane. Though one could easily pick apart some of the complications that happen during the film's third act and the film's extremely shallow treatment of its non-American characters, it's still a worthwhile action piece that doesn't shy away from how some of the film's "heroes" have dark sides that make them as reprehensible as any Nazi they kill. Such is the nature of The Dirty Dozen - it has enough moral ambiguity to make it more intriguing than a simple goodies-versus-baddies film but not enough to make you seriously question the entertainment you're getting out of watching the heroes complete their mission. All in all, a reasonably fun - if a little on the long side - piece of wartime fun.
Robert Aldrich, 1967
In 1944, an Army major is made to undertake a top-secret mission that involves the use of a dozen dangerous convicts.
The Dirty Dozen almost seems quaint by today's standards with an implausible high concept that wouldn't seem out-of-place in a Michael Bay movie. The premise involves Lee Marvin's hard-ass Army major being made to assemble a team of convicted American soldiers for a suicide mission against a chateau full of German officers ahead of the D-Day invasion. The convicts themselves are of course a colourful and difficult group of characters whose obvious problem with authority makes training them for their mission so challenging that at least two-thirds of this 150-minute movie is spent setting them up for the mission. Of course, it helps that the cast is populated by a bunch of recognisable old-school actors, each playing some fairly basic yet amusing action movie stereotypes with considerable gusto. The disparate personalities clash frequently and make for good interpersonal conflict throughout the film even as the group learns to function as a unit - this helps to keep the film's first half sufficiently interesting.
The action doesn't start in earnest until the second half, with a training exercise followed by the mission proper, but both examples demonstrate considerable competence when it comes to staging action sequences that are both high-tension and high-octane. Though one could easily pick apart some of the complications that happen during the film's third act and the film's extremely shallow treatment of its non-American characters, it's still a worthwhile action piece that doesn't shy away from how some of the film's "heroes" have dark sides that make them as reprehensible as any Nazi they kill. Such is the nature of The Dirty Dozen - it has enough moral ambiguity to make it more intriguing than a simple goodies-versus-baddies film but not enough to make you seriously question the entertainment you're getting out of watching the heroes complete their mission. All in all, a reasonably fun - if a little on the long side - piece of wartime fun.