The Dirty Dozen | Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine

The Dirty Dozen | Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine | Great movie, good transfer

DVDs:

The Dirty Dozen

	The Dirty Dozen Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine Warner Home Video, 2005 average customer review:based on 107 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A model for dozens of action films to follow, this box-office hit from 1967 refined a die-hard formula that has become overly familiar, but it's rarely been handled better than it was in this action-packed World War II thriller. Lee Marvin is perfectly cast as a down-but-not-out army major who is offered a shot at personal and professional redemption. If he can successfully train and discipline a squad of army rejects, misfits, killers, prisoners, and psychopaths into a first-rate unit of specialized soldiers, they'll earn a second chance to make up for their woeful misdeeds. Of course, there's a catch: to obtain their pardons, Marvin's band of badmen must agree to a suicide mission that will parachute them into the danger zone of Nazi-occupied France. It's a hazardous path to glory, but the men have no other choice than to accept and regain their lost honor. What makes The Dirty Dozen special is its phenomenal cast including Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, Jim Brown, Clint Walker, Trini Lopez, Robert Ryan, and others. Cassavetes is the Oscar-nominated standout as one of Marvin's most rebellious yet heroic men, but it's the whole ensemble--combined with the hard-as-nails direction of Robert Aldrich--that makes this such a high-velocity crowd pleaser. The script by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller (from the novel by E.M. Nathanson) is strong enough to support the all-star lineup with ample humor and military grit, so if you're in need of a mainline jolt of testosterone, The Dirty Dozen is the movie for you. --Jeff Shannon

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The Dirty Dozen

This is an excellent WWII movie. It has a marvelous cast and the characters are all "fleshed out". You know who and what they are. I have watched it numerous times on TV, and decided I needed it for my collection. Highly recommended.

Great movie, good transfer

This is a great movie, and probably the best it has ever looked. Given the age of the source material, I'm guessing it would be almost impossible to get a better transfer than what they have here. The sound quality is decent, too, assuming the same issues.

I've always prefered The Devil's Brigade

I remember seeing this film when it originally played in the theaters in the summer of 1967 (the same summer as my favorite Bond Film, You Only Live Twice.) While I liked it a lot, especially the performances of Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, who I was already a big fan of from "The Great Escape" and "Battle of the Bulge," I was never that thrilled with the action sequences. I much preferred "The Devil's Brigade," which was a much more exciting film, much larger in scale and actually had some truth behind it (although, of course, many aspects were Hollywoodized.) It also had a terrific cast starting with William Holden and Cliff Robertson and was directed by action veteran, Andrew V. Mclaglen. It has always been unfairly accused of being a Dirty Dozen rip-off. As stated, I think it is far superior and would loved to see it released on blu-ray.

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Not as good as the book

If you simply want to watch an average WWII movie, this is as good a choice as any. Lee Marvin does a good job and there is nothing really wrong with the movie. But I read the book when I was younger and it is MUCH better.

THE DIRTY DOZEN is not a great film.

Let's set the record straight. THE DIRTY DOZEN is not a great film, not even a great WW II flick. It is a fantasy on every level, from Donald Sutherland masquerading as a visiting general inspecting the troops to the impossible insubordination of the "dirty dozen" belting other G.I's and holding their commander at bay with machine guns. How about Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson passing themselves off as real Germans at a
Nazi chateau party without being detected. Or Lee Marvin, again, firing a real machine gun at a soldier's rear to train him to climb up a rope. Give me a break! What the movie is (if you are willing to suspend your belief) is simply a very fun entertainment. Everybody wants to root for the underdog and we, the audience, grow to sympathize with these down and out renegade soldiers, losers who blew it in life and get one more chance to redeem themselves. (Not to say, of course, that a suicide mission gives them much to look forward to). The cast is stellar, the acting competent and the dialogue is often over the top (John Cassavetes really gets into his role, like when he yells in defiance he will not obey an order to cold shave: "NO SIR! I WILL NOT SHAVE")! My satellite network shows this movie sometimes twice a week, yes, twice a week, and when it's on I'll invariably watch it. The story moves and although fanciful, you wonder what inane pranks will follow. Telly Savalas as the psycho GI is unique to WWII military movies as is Jim Brown doing what he did best on the football field.
I must add this. The Warner Brothers version I purchased was a disappointment. The print appears to be an old theatre print with faded
colour, magenta skin tones and numerous image sequences streaming with lots of dirt. WARNER, which typically has the highest DVD transfer standards in the industry, just didn't seem to care about getting this one right. From my reading of other reviews, however, the double DVD special edition set is superior. I suggest you buy that and not the WARNER 2005 version that I've just written about. Overall, THE DIRTY DOZEN is a real romp, kind of what HOGAN'S HEROES was as a German prisoner of war camp. Entertaining but YOU BELIEVE THIS?

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