Dirty Dozen in This Review,

Dirty Dozen

In this review, the author will talk about the 1967 film, the Dirty Dozen. The film is a typical humorous, yet adventurous war romp by Lee Marvin and company that is well worth the watching. The conflicts between the characters provides an interesting study in human relationships that make the audience care for the characters and stay awake during the movie.

The Dirty Dozen is a movie directed by Robert Aldrich and released by MGM in 1967. The film was made in the United Kingdom and features Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas and Robert Webber. The film is based upon E.M. Nathanson's novel of the same name as the film. In the film, 12 condemned soldier-prisoners (murderers and rapists) who are removed from prison and serve with Lee Marvin who heads up a suicide mission to kill hundreds of Nazi officers at a holiday chateau in the French city of Rennes just prior to the D-Day landings in the hopes of knocking out most of the Nazi high command. Marvin plays a headstrong, authoritarian OSS U.S. Army major heading up the suicide detail. The maverick major has to pick and train the 12 hardened, prison punks, for a guerrilla mission. We get details on the crimes that each of them committed and see the masterly method that Marvin (Maj. Reisman) uses to motivated each of jail birds to commit to suicide rather than the hangman's noose. If they succeed, they go free. Variety at the time gave it stellar reviews ("Variety.com").

Interestingly enough, this film was one of the first that Roger Ebert ever reviewed as a newly minted film critic for the Chicago Sun Times. As he notes, the film "In fact, right up to the last scene the movie is amusing, well paced, intelligent (Ebert)." Unfortunately, the humor ends as the film's plot leads up to the real big party in the chateau. The dozen ex-con commandos trap all of the German officers and their beautiful German and French concubines in the bomb shelter of the castle. Our heroess then screw the tops off of the air vents, pour in gasoline, add a few grenades and voila, Nazi SS flambee (Ebert). Unfortunately, the good bad guys do not get far away from the action. Most of them are picked off before they can get to the get away car which happens to be a stolen German half-track. The film then ends with a scene in which the survivors are shown to be Major Reisman (Lee Marvin), Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) and Wladislaw (Charles Bronson). Wladislaw wryly remarks to Major Reisman that killing officers could become a habit after he has a medal put on his chest by a an officer who remarks that they need men like him (ibid.).