This is How Movies Should Be Made

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

This film stands up remarkably well after half a century and the casting separates the men from the boys in the sense that the real actors like Robert Ryan went on getting work for years afterwards while the flavor-of-the-month school like Telly Savalas plus the out-and-out novelty castings like Trini Lopez enjoyed a mayfly moment and then found their natural level. It was a workable idea and movies with numbers - The Magnificent Seven, Ocean's Eleven - tended to score by a combination of potent names and a decent script. This is no exception and it has another factor going for it i.e. the three stages; 1) Recruitment, 2) Training, 3) the caper and/or mission, all designed to generate interest segueing into suspense. Whilst it can be faulted if one puts ones' mind to it it is also easy to score it eight out of ten for all three stages.

A big bunch of great great actors in this, actors that I love very much, specially: Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, George Kennedy, Ernest Borgnine, and John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Richard Jaeckel, Ralph Meeker, etc. Great director, Robert Aldrich, a man who made only super films like "Emperor of the North"(with the same Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine), "The Flight of the Phoenix"(again with Borgnine and George Kennedy), "4 for Texas"(with Charles Bronson and Richard Jaeckel), "Kiss Me Deadly"(with Ralph Meeker), "Vera Cruz"(with Bronson and Borgnine again), "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"(with the great Bette Davis). Great film, super action, well directed, well acted, one of the most popular film of all time.

I loved this. Right up there with my favourite Aldrich films (though maybe 'Kiss Me Deadly' is still my number one), and of the greatest performances of both Lee Marvin and John Cassavetes (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at both the Golden Globes and Oscars for his work here).This hearkened back to the heady times when if you got a great cast and director together, you were virtually guaranteed you'd come out of it, because of comparatively little studio interference, with a bonafide classic piece of cinema. People thought the studio system was broken and needed fixing, by films such as 'Easy Rider'? THIS, along with other fine Aldrich works from this period, age a lot better and hold up much finer today than Dennis Hopper's so-called 'masterpiece' and its ilk.

There have been plenty of films about small groups of soldiers pitted against superior forces or given special training to achieve a seemingly impossible task. And many of those films involved ragtag misfits given a chance to avoid far worse ends than death in battle.But "The Dirty Dozen" is notable for its less biased portrayal of Americans at war. Unlike the war films produced during WWII, "The Dirty Dozen" paints both sides of the conflict with the brush of realism. We see American soldiers commit crimes and act out of malice.Another notable aspect of the film is that one of the dozen was portrayed by Jim Brown, active NFL running back. As an Ohio native and a fan of Brown (and the Cleveland Browns), it was novel to see the athlete--certainly one of the best athletes of all time and the best running back ever by most accounts--on the big screen.The story, which portrays the hellish nature of war, including the slaughter of noncombatants, still has a humorous side. The dozen, who are recruited for a mission behind the German lines, have no respect for authority or discipline. Their recruiter (Lee Marvin) uses novel ways to gain their respect and to convince them that he values them as men and soldiers. On one occasion, he imports prostitutes into the training camp for their entertainment. And the men display cleverness and outside-the-box thinking (something most soldiers have drilled out of them) to prove their mettle and earn the chance to attempt the mission.As in detailed bank heists, Marvin trains his men thoroughly and tests them repeatedly. But things never go exactly as planned. During the mission, they have to be creative.In an odd way, this film probably appeals to those who like films of wartime and those who possess more anti-war sentiments. The all-star cast is largely responsible, though the story is certainly engaging.