Where Classic Hollywood Meets The New Hollywood

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2010)

THE DIRTY DOZEN is very much a film that stands between the fault line of the old classic Hollywood and of the New Hollywood . Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE was released the same year to great commercial and critical success . The Hays code that dictated what could and couldn't be shown in American cinema was being replaced but a certification system and this film reflects this . Notice how a well regarded film critic like Roger Ebert was shocked at the amount of violence on screen . Of course it's very tame by today's standards but Robert Aldrich like Sam Peckinpah always did try to push on screen violence in the 1960s
It's interesting that there's moral ambiguity surrounding the plot . With a film like THE GUNS OF NAVERONE and WHERE EAGLES DARE it'd be jolly decent chaps been given a mission to kill the dastardly hun but here we saw a bunch of criminals doing so . Also interesting how the film differentiates between the " good criminals " and the " bad criminals " even if you haven't seen the film before you'll be hoping which character gets their pardon and which one dies in action
Of the cast Lee Marvin , Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan would have been well known where as Donald Sutherland , Charles Bronsan and John Cassevetes weren't famous names . Bronson did go on to be a big name in 1970s cinema and it's difficult to think of a decade apart from the 1970s where a tall , thin slightly goofy looking actor would have been a film star . Cassevetes didn't really become a big name as an actor but did become a highly acclaimed director of independent features . Post 70s indie cinema owes much to him
As for the actual plot there's a major plot hole in that the allies know there's a Nazi conference taking place but instead using a squadron of bombers to reduce the château to rubble they come up with a scheme that's little chance of success involving the condemned men , but if the allied planners showed more sense there wouldn't have been a story . The plotting does mean the film is rather flabby and overlong but it's a fairly entertaining one if you like war adventures and Lee Marvin and his cohorts are much better actors than Brad Pitt and the ones who appeared a recent film by Tarantino