The Dirty Dozen (1967) - film review

England, 1944.  On the eve of the Allied invasion of Normandy in WWII, Major John Reisman is offered a most unusual assignment.  He must take twelve convicted criminals and transform them into a crack fighting team, their mission: to infiltrate a château in Brittany that is used as a Nazi retreat and eliminate as many German officers as possible.  If the mission is a success, the convicts who survive will have their sentences commuted; if not, they will either die in battle or be shipped back to the United States to rot in prison or hang.  Reisman is not daunted by the scale of the undertaking and manages to turn a pack of sociopathic authority-hating rebels and deviants into an effective squad of combatants.  The Nazis have no idea what is coming their way...

The Dirty Dozen is the defining American war film of the late 1960s.  Whilst it was not itself intended as a reaction to the conflict in Vietnam it did come along at the moment just when public opinion was beginning to turn against the war.  With its strident anti-authority, anti-military tone, the film played a part in establishing the counter-culture in American cinema and would have a lasting effect on audiences and film directors, making a distinct break with the war films of the past which glorified heroism and wallowed in America’s military supremacy.  The Dirty Dozen was a film that caught the Zeitgeist, probably like no other film in history, and this is borne out by the fact it was one of MGM’s biggest box office successes and remains a popular classic of its genre.

Director Robert Aldrich had made several war films prior to this, many of which - most notably the mould-breaking Attack (1956) - were noted for their gritty realism and uncompromising depictions of violence.  The Dirty Dozen was no less controversial and was condemned by many critics who judged the film obscenely nihilistic and some of its more graphic sequences unnecessarily sadistic.  By today’s standards, the film is pretty mild and has lost much of its shock value, although the action-packed denouement (the attack on the château) remains one of the most exciting and impressively choreographed action sequences of any war film.

What is perhaps most surprising about The Dirty Dozen is how much humour it contains.  The lengthy middle section, where the twelve convicts take on the U.S. military and emerge as a mean fighting unit (in spite of, rather than because of, military discipline), feels like a dry run for Robert Altman’s MASH (1970) - particularly as Donald Sutherland plays a part in the anarchic proceedings.  The sleek underbelly of black humour runs right through the film, fuelled by what is obviously a deep-rooted pathological loathing for authority and the military.  The irony of the United State army training killers to be killers (rebranding criminals as heroes) will not be lost on the spectator, although it isn’t clear whether Aldrich is intending to make some profound moral point or is just out to have a good time.  Whichever it is, thanks to Aldrich’s slick direction and a sterling effort from a star-studded ensemble cast (led by Lee Marvin at his sardonic best), The Dirty Dozen delivers the goods with gusto - you can enjoy it as both a vitriolic anti-war piece and a rollicking good action-adventure yarn.  Either way, authority gets it where it hurts.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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