The Dirty Dozen

Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967) is a pretty good war film posturing as something significant. Aldrich tries to sell the audience an anti-war message; as such, the film is a complete failure. As an irreverent, goofy shoot-'em-up, it holds up reasonably well, and that's the level on which it should be viewed.

Britain, just before D-Day. Hard-nosed Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) is assigned by General Warden (Ernest Borgnine) to assemble a team of twelve criminals, several of them murderers and rapists, for a suicide mission into Nazi-occupied France. He manages to train them, slowly earning their respect, moulding them into a team, and getting a chance to embarrass his stuffy superiors, particularly Colonel Breed (Robert Ryan). Then comes the mission: parachuting to a French villa used by Nazi officers for R&R, and slaughter as many as possible. It's a dirty job, but our "dirty dozen" manages to pull it off, but not without significant losses.

The Dirty Dozen's problem is its message. Aldrich was a committed leftist, and decidedly cynical about war and heroism in films like Vera Cruz and Attack! Here, he tries to have his cake and eat it too, showing bloody mayhem for the conservatives while lobbing some anti-establishment, anti-war messages at the liberal crowd. This is clearly why the film's popularity is so enduring, but it works best on the former, simpler level.

Aldrich spells out the message clearly enough. Our characters are criminals, the stiff-necked Generals are push-over martinets, and the anti-Establishment credentials are early. The mission itself, far beyond the ambiguous worth of Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone's commando raids, is straightforward murder: slaughtering dozens of helpless men and women with grenades and machine guns. Clearly, we're supposed to take away that war is a dirty, crazy business, essentially murder on a grand scale.

If this was the intent, then the movie bombs. Aldirch wants us to be aghast at the mass murder, but it's is presented as thrilling, blood-splattered fun, without the visceral impact of Bonnie and Clyde or The Wild Bunch. Our twelve anti-heroes are criminals, but the film finds mitigating circumstances for most of them, and aside from the psychotic Maggot, none of them is really a bad guy. Aldrich wants us to find their shenanigans amusing, and cheer when they "stick it to the man" - fair enough, but it rather kills the message. If you're making an anti-war film, you shouldn't make violence fun and exciting, or the criminal-protagonists seem like cool guys.

The movie works fine without its ostensible thematic baggage. Aldrich's obnoxious posturing aside, he does a great job with the actors, making us empathize with this bunch of crooks, and the training scenes are excellent black comedy. We enjoy watching this raucuous team form into a coherent unit, and laugh at most of their antics - a sub-mental goofball (Donald Sutherland) impersonating a general, the botched war game exercise, Reisman and Wladislaw's (Charles Bronson) unconvincing German act ("Act mean and grunt"). The first two hours are loads of fun; Aldrich does a great job moulding this group of misfits and most have enough screen time to shine.

Curiously, after all this build-up, the set-piece raid on the chateau is rather anti-climactic. Aldrich handles the action well, but the staging is less-than-impressive: instead of a big shootout, we have solitary sentries popping out to get slaughtered one by one. The highlight of the scene is Jim Brown's famous grenade run, a thrilling set-piece within a set-piece. Aldrich certainly deserves credit for making his anti-heroes mortal, something rare in this genre, and the movie ends on an amusingly cynical note.

Lee Marvin, in the midst of his brief flirtation with stardom, gives his most iconic performance. Reisman embodies Marvin's screen persona - tough-as-nails, cynical and defiant - and his performance is flawless. The huge ensemble cast is well-used: John Cassavetes (Rosemary's Baby) got an Oscar nod for his loudmouth troublemaker, but the real stand-outs are Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West), in perhaps his best role, and Donald Sutherland (JFK), who gets the film's best scene impersonating a General. Jim Brown is superb: it's easy to dismiss his part as tokenism, but a tough, take-no-shit black character was unheard of in 1960's Hollywood, and Brown pulls it off wonderfully. Groggy favorites Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine are poorly used as stiff-necked brass, and Telly Savalas's scenery-chewing is a bit much.

The Dirty Dozen is a fun shoot-'em-up lacking the courage of its radical convictions. On the commando movie scale, it's more the blood-spattered frivolity of Where Eagles Dare than the serious action of Guns of Navarone and The Train. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

PS: I know it's not March yet.