A dirty, grungy film.

Rating: 6/10 (7 February 2009)

WW2 classics tend to have the unfair connotation as being those movies your grandfather likes because they reflect conservative patriotism and Americans defeating evil Krauts and Japs with flashing grins and gusto. The Dirty Dozen is not that movie. Instead of beaming, all American youth, the cast is filled with slightly menacing, slouching actors portraying counter-cultural antiheroes the witch tit's side of likable. Instead of glorifying the ranks and institutions of the military, the film delights in criticizing and tearing down its structure. And instead of an awarding cathartic defeat of the Germans, the viewer is treated to disturbing and morally ambiguous ending.
It's definitely a film of the 60s, but weirdly one that you wouldn't expect would be as appreciated and recognized as others. Its counterculture and anti-institutional approach is not set as a rallying cry for individualism or anti-war protest, but instead is subjected to leering and sometimes frightening characters like Franko and Maggot (get it? A Spanish fascist and a putrefaction growth as a violent bully and a disturbed racist and sexist Southerner, respectively?). The movie doesn't have an anti-war message but certainly does not make war seem sensible or dignified. The Americans certainly aren't the good guys but neither are the main characters. Pretty much all the viewer has going for him in terms of relateability or enjoyment is Lee Marvin's curmudgeony major. Everything else in this movie stinks to high heaven--but at least that's intentional.
It's certainly an interesting viewing experience, I'll give it that, and I'd like to know more about its reception at the time. Apparently Roger Ebert hated it and military men loved it. Makes sense to me.
--PolarisDiB