Review of The Dirty Dozen (1967) by Edith N — 28 Apr 2008

Oh, Gods. Look, guys, you're not going to get a review you like out of me. You'll note I'm giving it a (marginally) positive review, but my problems with the movie stack up pretty high, here. Like, you know, the entire basic premise. Why--[i]why[/i] would they have even chosen this group of guys in the first place? As is pointed out at the beginning, these people include a crazy man, a couple of borderline (if not completely) retarded people, and a dangerous religious nut. Only one of them speaks any German at all, and not much there. For heaven's sake, they are sending [i]a black guy[/i], one who cannot hope to hide as he makes his way back to safety, because he will stand out more than, well, any of the others, including the Hispanic guy. Further, let's be honest, here. The army was not yet integrated, so this would have been the first integrated unit in the entire army, unless you include the white officers controlling the black soldiers.

So yeah. Lee Marvin controls twelve guys who've been given a reprieve if they're willing to undertake a suicide mission. (Lee Marvin? Only Aryan-looking guy in the bunch.) For reasons I cannot understand, they cannot find twelve already-trained, German-speaking, not-actually-nuts guys to undertake a mission to severely damage the Germans . . . in some way I don't understand. Presumably the site has something to do with helping the D-Day invasion; they certainly talk about it often enough for me to assume that's what's going on. How, I'm not sure, though this may have something to do with a radio tower. I think.

Oh, my. Yeah, I get that it's a guy movie, and therefore, it doesn't have to make sense, any more than it has to make sense when two totally mismatched people fall in love in a chick flick. Then again, I don't understand a lot of those, either. I have to tell you, there is this thing called a "genre" picture, and while I don't entirely understand the whole thing, what I'm getting is that you like it or you don't. There's pretty much no middle ground--though I will acknowledge the technical skill of this film, even though I have to say that the filming is at its worst when it's trying to be the best it can.

The things I put up with for you guys. (I'm actually talking to the guys, here, and not using it to mean "people.") [i]Cool Hand Luke[/i]? That was for the guys; on my own, I'd've turned it off. There have been several movies like that. I might've finished this one on my own, but I sure wouldn't've wrestled with my DVD player, which is messing with me these days, in order to finish it. Fine, I would've said. That's enough; I'll try fussing with it to let me watch a better movie. There's a stack of movies in my hallway right now, just waiting to be stuck in the DVD player. This was not the best of them, I'm sure.

"A bunch of mismatched guys who have to come together to accomplish something tough" is its own genre. There are worse ones out there, and I see why it's a Guy Movie Classic. But I don't much like the genre, and that may well be significantly affected by the fact that it doesn't make any sort of logical sense.