THRILL SCALE 1-10
4.5
HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?
Never
BEST SEQUENCE
The explosive finale to the assault on the chalet
BEST LINE
"Boy, oh boy, oh boy. Killin' generals could get to be a habit with me"
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE
81%
ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS
"Amoral on the surface and exuding testosterone, The Dirty Dozen utilizes combat and its staggering cast of likable scoundrels to deliver raucous entertainment."
IMDB SYNOPSIS
"During World War II, a rebellious U.S. Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission of German officers."
DIRECTOR
Robert Aldrich
MAIN CAST
Lee Marvin and twelve other guys
THOUGHTS
- This movie's tone fluctuates wildly, and not very successfully in my opinion. The third act, depicting the primary mission undertaken by the Dirty Dozen, is exciting and visceral and brutally violent in a way I didn't expect. The first two acts, in comparison, are much tamer - not very exciting, and downright cutesy at times. The second act, in particular, almost plays like it's trying to be a wacky slobs vs. snobs comedy - war games by way of Animal House, with the rough-and-tumble Dirty Dozen taking down a technically superior squad in a training exercise. If I were just reviewing the third act, I'd probably give it a 7 or 8; the first two acts would be around 1 or 2. So I split the difference and that's how I landed on 4.5
- Perhaps the intention was to give us some time to get to know all of the main characters, but that didn't really happen either. When I reviewed The Magnificent Seven I found that some of the characters were pretty indistinguishable from the others, and it's even more so when we bump that number up to twelve. Lee Marvin makes a big impact as the leader of the group, but when it comes to the titular dozen only about half of them stand out: Charles Bronson and John Cassavetes are what I would consider the two main guys, you've got a very young Donald Sutherland in one of his first noteworthy roles, football player Jim Brown is fine as an actor, and Telly Savalas plays the only member of the group who's legitimately objectionable, the racist and misogynistic, but delightfully named, Archer J. Maggott
- Inexplicably, Ernest Borgnine is second billed; he's barely in this movie. I'm almost positive that this will be the last we see of Mr. Borgnine in these movies, and it's been a rollercoaster. I hated him in The Poseidon Adventure, he was pretty good in The Wild Bunch, and he barely registers in The Dirty Dozen. All along it's been a bit of a funny experience seeing him as these blustery tough guys, since I most associate him with Marty, a delightful little movie from 1955 in which he plays a mild-mannered butcher who just wants to find love. Marty won the Best Picture Oscar for that year, and Ernest Borgnine won Best Actor, and I think his performance in Marty is better than all of these combined
- Huge parallels between this movie and Inglourious Basterds: a rag-tag group whose main priority is to kill a bunch of high-ranking Nazis, which they achieve through infiltration, impersonation and a lot of explosions. The whole Suicide Squad concept also must have been influenced by The Dirty Dozen, what with a bunch of death-row convicts given the option between probable death or certain death; the mission or the noose
- I assumed that the nickname "The Dirty Dozen" would be more metaphorical than literal, a reference to their rough ways or hard demeanours. But no, in the movie it's actually quite literal. The men refuse to wash and shave with cold water while their superiors get to use hot, so they get filthy. A little less intimidating than what I had in mind
- And that's about all I have to say about The Dirty Dozen! If I ever get the urge to watch it again, I'd probably just watch the last 45 minutes and know that I didn't miss much
Up next: We've already seen him act in The Third Man, but this is the only movie on the list directed by Orson Welles: Touch of Evil from 1958
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