great movie

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2002)

"The Dirty Dozen" must be one of Ted Turner's favorite movies since the picture seems to run endlessly on WTBS or TNT. It is a fun movie to watch, all the way through. Everyone knows the premise so there's no reason to repeat it here.
Great movies need two things---a great story and great acting. Plausible or not, "Dozen"'s story is highly entertaining and it has many riveting moments, right from the start with the hanging of one of the prisoners (too bad for him that Lee Marvin shows up too late to include him for the mission!). Marvin is the center of the movie and he carries a lot of credibility, being a wounded WWII veteran himself. "Dozen" is an important movie if only because it was the screen debuts for both Jim Brown and Donald Sutherland. If there was another WWII movie before this one which depicted a black soldier as a hero, I haven't seen it and it is interesting to note that, of the prisoners, Brown's character is the only one who truly doesn't deserve the punishment that he's awaiting, having killed in self-defense. Donald Sutherland doesn't have a lot to do in this movie but his gaunt, moronic Pinckney gives the movie some comic relief, particularly where he gets to impersonate a general inspecting crack paratroopers.
Most of the "Dozen" don't get a lot to do in this movie---just too many characters and not enough time to develop them (sort of like how the Wally Schirra character was given almost no lines in "The Right Stuff"). An ensemble piece like this usually means that there's a lot of competition going on amongst the cast and John Cassavettes and Telly Savalas stand out as Franco, the urban hoodlum, and Maggett, the psychotic rapist. Savalas has the harder part, playing a truly rotten and despicable character who has absolutely no redeeming qualities. You're not unhappy when Maggett is killed later on but you have to admire how Savalas deftly handles the part---I say deftly because this type of role could've typecast him forever if he hadn't played it just right.