The Road To Dunkirk: The Dirty Dozen
- Jul 13, 2017
- 2 min read
On July 20th Christopher Nolan's WW2 Thriller, Dunkirk, lands in cinemas. To prepare yourselves, and myself, for what will likely be a wholly memorable war film, each day until release I'll be reviewing some of my favourite WW2 films. Up first, the humorous yet increasingly dark Dirty Dozen.
Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin) has been given a seemingly impossible task, to take 12 condemned military prisoners, both those with life and with death sentences, and turn them into a fighting unit to undertake a mission which they will likely not survive. His unit, known only to themselves as The Dirty Dozen, are unshaven, unkempt individuals, many of whom don't deserve the punishment they have been dealt. Amongst them are Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), Pinkley (Donald Sutherland) and Maggot (Telly Savalas) Together they must prove they're worth an, if their mission is successful, gain their freedom.
The Dirty Dozen is something of a strange film. While I very much enjoy it in its entirety there is a strange disconnect between the two tones of the film. While much of the film is humorous, most notably Donald Sutherland's general scene and the manuevers exercise sequence. These moments of levity are helped in part by the great acting of the cast, from the idiotic Sutherland to the hard nosed Marvin and psychotic Savalas. But as the film progresses it rapidly descends into a film about the murder of dozens of innocents, the psychological breakdown of a man and the deaths of almost the entire unit. To say the tone travels from 0 to 100 very quickly would be an understatement.
While the final action sequence, and the only real action sequence in the film, is very well done and tension in leading up to it is palpable, it feels as if it is from a very different film. As German soldiers are gunned down in droves, generals and their wives are incinerated and The Dozen are forced to put down one of their own after he looses control, it all starts to feel a little more Saving Private Ryan and a little less Kelly's Heroes.
Ultimately, The Dirty Dozen is an entertaining film. While I feel that the portion of the film before the major tonal shift is the part that most people remember, the finale acts as a sobering reminder that war isn't all fun and games, and that's hardly a terrible thing.
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