The Dirty Dozen (15 June 1967)
directed by Robert Aldrich
starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charsels Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Trini López, Ralph Meeker, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, Robert Webber, Tom Busby, Ben Carruthers, Stuart Cooper, Robert Phillips, Colin Maitland, Al Mancini
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Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Seven Arts Productions Script: Nunnally Johnson, Lukas Heller Based on the book by: E. M. Nathanson Music: Frank De Vol Running time: 149 minutes Awards: 1968 Academy Award for Best Effects, Sound Effects Tags: Action; Comedy; Drama; execution; grenades; hanging; novel adaptation; racism; suicide mission; War; World War II Tactical strength: [7/10]
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Major Reisman (Lee Marvin), an effective World War II combat soldier but somewhat of a maverick, has bad rapport with his commanding officers, especially General Worden (Ernest Borgnine). The general thinks he has just the mission for the major -- a suicide mission to attack a chateau filled with high German officers. Not wanting to sacrifice good soldiers on the mission, the General assigns the Major twelve criminials either on death row or with sentences of twenty or more years. If they "volunteer" for the mission, the convicted soldiers will receive at least a reduction in sentence. Many of actors playing the felons either had an established television presence or moved on to have quite successfull careers: Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, and Clint Walker.
In the next act, the major trains the felons in the various skills they will need to attack the chateau. But more importantly, the major wants to change the attitude of the convicts from individuals into a team. Essentially the second act of The Dirty Dozen follows a fairly standard plot thread. The felons at first fight against one another, but through shared experiences and developing common enemies (which include Major Reisman, the camp guards, and the army in general). By the end of the act, the dozen men have developed a comaraderie and a desire to complete the mission.
In the third act, the men carry out the mission. If you haven't seen The Dirty Dozen, going into details about the events of the mission would give away too much of the suspense about who will survive the mission if anyone does. I do find it interesting that MGM decided to produce a pro-war film in the middle of the Viet Nam conflict and all the peace demonstrations of the 1960s. I find it equally interesting how much anti-German sentiment still seems to find its way into films even more than twenty years after the end of the war.
The major's team has the assignment to kill as many German officers as possible -- a reasonable wartime assignment. The film's execution of the Germans shows some very strong themes of revenge and retribution and relies on the audience to accept this reasoning to justify the quite gruesome execution the major's team imposes on the Germans. Reminiscent of the gas chambers the Third Reich created for the Jews, the German officers and their wives get locked in a bomb shelter filled with ammunition. The team drops unexploded grenades into the shelter's air vents, and the grenades get stopped by the metal grills over the vent openings in the shelter's ceiling. The crowd in the shelter begins to scream and look for a means to escape. The major's team then pours gasoline into the air vents and then finally drops live grenades into each vent. While the shrapnel from the grenades probably killed many of the Germans before they caught fire, I'm sure that several survived long enough to suffer from the burning gasoline until the ammunition dump explodes and kills the remainder still alive.
In retrospect, the grisly execution might seem justifiable for those nasty perpetrators of the Holocaust. Although in a movie made today, I don't think producers would allow the casual killing of the German officers' wives. We have so much trepidation now about collateral damage, that a remake of The Dirty Dozen would probably have to carefully lure only the officers into the bunker while keeping the women alive. That, or we would have to have to demonize the wives to make them just as evil as their husbands. Or, even more likely, the chateau wouldn't have any of the officer's wives present -- only prostitutes serving the corrupt German officers.
With thirteen major players, we don't get much time to do much more than get a sketch of each character. The script employs various stereotypes to characterize the felons, and the actors do a good job at playing within their stereotyped roles. The Dirty Dozen falls in the middle of Lee Marvin's career, but this role seems to have elevated his options since in most of his subsequent roles he plays a major character in a film with a fairl large budget.
Compared to today's action genre, The Dirty Dozen doesn't have nearly as many scenes of intense action, but it does manage to entertain with it's fairly well composed plot and well integrated subplots. And in the end, The Dirty Dozen delivers a fairly high body count for those who require that sort of thing.
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