The Vampire Diaries
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/movies/55194/the-dirty-dozen
Review of The Dirty Dozen
by Jeff Light
Posted on August 4th, 2022
Neutral 6
Overall Rating
 
+
another flick i watched for veteran's day, this one was the original suicide squad.  like the director's other films, i think this one is a bit long and indulgent.  it's a really interesting movie though, that essentially is an ideological battle between different parts of the us military.  i knew a guy who had grown up the biggest military nut you could imagine... joined rotc, took apart and cleaned his own guns, subscribed to soldier of fortune magazine, could identify the sounds of different plane engines!  he joined the marine corps and couldn't stand it.  he said that their whole mission was to break you down and turn you into somebody who didn't think and just followed the stupid ideas of everyone higher up.  he's the kind of guy we're following in the dirty dozen. one of the surprises of the film for me was finding out about clint walker.  apparently famous for the western series cheyenne, i didn't know he was supposed to be playing a native american in this until i read up after the film!  dude was a real life superhero though, built like a greek god and more interested in outdoors stuff than acting.  he's fascinating to read about...had a ski accident where his heart was pierced by a ski pole and he was pronounced dead... then he came back and lived another 20+ years!  what a legend. very little of this film is action, mostly it's a battle for the souls of these men who were thrown away by the military.  each of them cracked under the military's rules, and committed various offences.  some of them more and some less justified, but the ideological battle plays out between the higher-ups as well: about the value of discipline and cleanliness and following orders versus using men's own talents, their creativity and innovation, and finding what will personally motivate them rather than demanding they do everything a set way.  it's a good film for teachers, too!  ha ha!   one thing that's hard to appreciate watching it for the first time now is how many tropes it was following versus how many it possibly created.  there are a lot here, from the "they gotta become a team" to the rapist being obviously creepy (rather than say, a charming well-dressed frat boy) to one member being a persistent @$$#ole the whole story to random bad guys coming out of nowhere at the end.  plus the ending scene here is famously homaged in tarantino's inglorious basterds.  it's also clear that this is just before the end of the hays code, as they're sure not to actually show some of the things the soldiers were up to, and that only "good" guys survive.  despite that annoying framing of the story, standout performances by lee marvin and charles bronson anchor this film enough to make it hold up today.
Jeff Light
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