Above Average, But Pretty Dirty, Too.

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2006)

Twelve Leavenworth- or gallows-bound Army misfits are gathered together and trained for a suicide mission. The film gives us the tale of these assorted loonies becoming a solidary male group under the tutelage of their tough but practical major (Marvin) and his Sergeant (Jaekel) who accompany them as they are parachuted behind German lines to carry out their mission.
Except for the last half hour, the movie is a kind of "training camp" movie familiar to audiences during World War II. Everybody wisecracks and insults everyone else. There are fist fights and pratfalls. When a stern and distant colonel (Ryan) penetrates the secret camp he is humiliated and run off by the filthy trainees. Later, Ryan is further humiliated when the dirty dozen play on the opposite side during a combat exercise and manage to capture him and his headquarters by pretending to be on his side. (I can't count the number of times this had been done in earlier movies. Even Laurel and Hardy did it.) The laughs and grabass disappear in the final thirty minutes when the group's mission becomes clear. They are to invade an estate in which German officers take some rest and relaxation with their families and girl friends. And the film now begins to make us squirm a bit.
Members of the group penetrate the castle and hide in various niches while others prepare to trap the German officers inside. The slimiest and most clearly nuts of the dirty dozen (Savalas), who is referred to by a staff officer as "a malignant dwarf", silently knifes a victim in one of the bedrooms. The victim seems to have been playing a game with his girl friend who enters the room and begins inquiring where her partner is. Savalas is behind a curtain, caressing his knife like Jack the Ripper, and stifling maniacal giggles. The young woman finally grows impatient and says angrily, "This is no longer a joke." Indeed it isn't. Savalas grabs her from behind, covering her mouth, holding his knife against her delicate neck and taunting her for being a filthy slut who deserves God's punishment.
The whole tone of the movie changes with this scene because we realize that these guys we've been rooting for all along can be pretty thoroughly murderous thugs.
After Savalas finishes her off, bells ring, alarms clang, shots ring out, and all the guests -- men and women alike -- retreat to a bunker in the cellar. The dirty dozen lock them inside, then pour gasoline on them through the ceiling vents while the girls scream and the Germans shout while trying to stuff the vents closed. They don't succeed. They are all blown to bits and most of the dirty dozen are killed in the action.
I don't know if the director intended it or not, but he's pulled us into a state of sympathy with these raggedy undisciplined warriors and then turned around on us and shown us that their mission consists of the deliberate murder of a hundred or more people, many of them innocent, all of them helpless. It does not leave the viewer with any feeling of triumph. Guilt is more like it. The greater message is that war itself is nothing more than organized homicide, not at all like a football game.
The acting really MAKES this movie. Lee Marvin has never been better. And his support is great -- stalwarts like Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, John Cassavetes, Jim Brown, Ralph Meeker, Charles Bronson, Donald Southerland. We don't get to know all of the men equally intimately. Some of the dirty dozen apparently have no lines of dialog at all. And sometimes the humor is silly. But all of that is papered over by the performances, by the efficient direction, and by wardrobe and cinematography, both departments outstanding.
It's long but never dull. It's both an entertainment and a lesson. See it if you get the chance.