It’s 1944, the Allies are poised to launch the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe. Major Reisman, an insubordinate US Army officer is tasked with training 12 condemned prisoners to storm a resort in Brittany. The resort plays host to prominent Nazi officers and officials. Their deaths would serve to disrupt the Nazi chain of command and give the invading allies an intrinsic advantage.
The Dirty Dozen is a darn good action flick. It has a straightforward plot, as long as you don’t think too hard about it. Some solid performances, most notably from Telly Savalas, Robert Ryan, Jim Brown and John Cassavetes. It has an anti-authoritarian theme which makes it unique among war movies at the time. It marks a shift in attitudes towards war at the time. World War II is not a holy cause for the characters, it is something they have unfortunately found themselves thrown into and they are only interested in getting out. As such, the characters are not inherently good and in some cases pretty fucked up.
It also has some great action scenes. It’s the kind of movie that when you come across it on TV, you’ll leave it on for probably a half-hour or 45 minutes. I will not pretend it's a movie that should be in the top 10 greatest movies of all time, but it’s a solid flick.
The best part about the Dirty Dozen is that it builds and it takes it’s time with that build. The movie clocks in at about two hours and thirty minutes and about one hour and forty-five minutes of this is spent building the characters. The last 45 minutes of the movie are spent SPOILERS killing 90% of them.
THE EDGE
The biggest problem with the Dirty Dozen is, unfortunately, the laughable nature of the core concept. The idea is that you would take men incarcerated for violent crimes and try to turn them into a fighting unit. They would be just as likely to kill each other and their troops as the enemy. Ralph Meeker, playing the resident psychiatrist, pokes holes in the plot for us.
FUN FACT! Ralph Meeker was the inspiration for Leo DeCaprio's character in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
If you have any doubts about what a horrible idea making convicted criminals soldiers is, just look at the current composition of the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
The production values leave a little to be desired, everything looks cheap, like they got it off the war movie that finished up the previous week (which they probably did). But with a large cast including two Oscar winners, (Marvin and Borgnine) and about several others who were leading performers in their own right, I’d say most of the money would have gone to the cast. Honestly, that’s not the worst way to spend your money in Hollywood. Every single player of any substance has at least one scene to shine. The best performance has to go to John Cassavetes's portrayal of Chicago gangster turned soldier prisoner Victor Franco.
3If you don’t know, John Cassavetes was a genius who pioneered his variation of The Method as combined with Cinéma Vérité. He was a highly influential filmmaker and writer. Martin Scorsese counts Casavettes as his chief influence. But let's get back to the drawbacks of the movie.
The only female character with more than 2 lines is a German girl who is stabbed in cold blood by Telly Savalas to show that character's psychopathy.
This is the entirety of her arc. There is no other female character in the movie. Ok, one exception, the hookers that were brought in for the Dozen’s graduation party.
You have now seen all the female characters in The Dirty Dozen. Between these 2 scenes a total of 7 minutes in the entire 2 and a half hours of the movie there are no other female characters. None of the Dozen even mention having a girl at home, or a girl that broke their heart. Nothing. This makes the already overwhelming amount of machismo in the film go over the top. On top of that, I have a big problem with this scene…these men are filthy. At this point in the movie, none of these characters has had a bath, conceivably in well over a week, and now we are supposed to believe that anybody would be able to stand within 10 feet of them without puking.
THE LOWDOWN
Working on The Dirty Dozen would have been a brutal slog. Helped in no part due to the massive talents involved. Chief among these difficulties would be none other than Lee Marvin. Marvin was going through a divorce during filming. Even the most dedicated professional would have a tough time putting up with the demands of being the star of the show and going through one of the more unpleasant aspects of domestic life. On top of this Marvin was a notorious alcoholic throughout most of his adult life. It went up a notch or two during the filming, contributing to the delays.
In addition to untreated alcoholism, the sets were destroyed by rainstorms. A majority of the filming took place in the north of England, during the rainiest summer in years. The filming was delayed so much that Jim Brown was unable to make it to Training Camp for the Cleveland Browns. As a result, Brown decided to retire from football. Read more about him and this in my article at pauldudar.com/blog.
The machismo brought forward in the final film was also a reflection of the competing egos among the cast. In 2010, I had the privilege to shake hands with Earnest Borgnine at Fan Expo. Borgnine was 93, and he shared an anecdote of shooting The Dirty Dozen.
And that is just the story that he could tell in mixed company. These egos aside, it would have been so cool to hang out with this bunch outside of filming. Between Borgnine, Marvin, Brown, Sutherland, Bronson and a frankly underutilized Robert Ryan there is a ton of talent in this movie, a so many of them are at the very start of great careers. Thankfully, while they were shooting, the publicity people made a sanitized version of an outing with the Dirty Dozen in Swinging London on Carnaby Avenue.
THE JIST
The Dirty Dozen is a great, albeit dated, WWII movie. It holds a great place in the history of cinema as a product of how 1967 saw war and the Vietnam War specifically. Its characters reflect the values that were starting to take root at that time. It is worthy of a watch for those who are looking for a piece of cinematic history.
Comments