The ultimate action movie re World War II...

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2003)

Lee Marvin heads an all-star cast in a very rugged, humorous, exciting and entertaining film wherein his mission is to train THE DIRTY DOZEN (a ragged bunch of misfits slated for the hangman's noose unless they opt to join him in his mission).
The cast is uniformly excellent in a variety of interesting roles--and the only underwritten roles without any depth are left to Robert Ryan and Ernest Borgnine as rather colorless military officers.
Outstanding characterizations are offered by Telly Savalas, Richard Jaeckel, Clint Walker, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown and Donald Sutherland. The best scenes are the rigorous training the men are forced to undergo before assigned to their real mission. Given the length of this little war epic, they could have eliminated the training exercise prank in which the men defeat another battalion and instead cut right to the chase which is the climactic mission to destroy a Nazi fortress and its inhabitants.
Action galore and some well developed humor along the way. Robert Aldrich keeps a firm hand on the direction but could have whittled the whole thing down to a more reasonable length. Still, it never bores and Lee Marvin, in the central role, commands the screen all the time.