I caught the ending of The Dirty Dozen years ago - if anyone has not seen the movie I will not spoil it, but it is bleak.
That moment stuck with me, but I had no idea what the movie was. It was not until a few years ago when I watched The Dirty Dozen for the first time, that I realised it came from that same movie.
I was planning on writing a review around the time I first watched it, but I did not have enough thoughts to put down about it.
After tearing through a series of movies about squads on a mission, and reacquainting myself with Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, it felt like I had enough of a feel for this genre to take a crack at The Dirty Dozen.
With this grounding in the genre, it is easier to see just how radical The Dirty Dozen really is.
Structurally, the movie is familiar:
The first two thirds of the film cover the team's training, and the third act covers the mission.
While it is not quite the same as Paul Verhoeven's work, there is a similarity in how Aldrich is using the pieces of a familiar genre, to both play to and undermine the viewer’s expectations.
Produced at the height of the Vietnam War, the film takes the familiar format of the World War Two adventure film, and undermines its sense of moral certainty - our protagonists are not just criminals, or misunderstood rebels. They include murderers and rapists.
Unlike other movies of this type, the mission is subordinate, and the goal is simple: they are just supposed to cause as much chaos and death as possible.
It is taking the genre and stripping it down to its most basic function: we are not here to watch our heroes sabotage a massive gun (The Guns of Navarone) or infiltrate a mountain fortress (Where Eagles Dare).
The team is literally just going to kill people.
And in its execution, the mission is where the movie completely moves away from its forebears: Maggott (Telly Savalas) goes AWOL almost immediately, while the Nazis and their guests flee into the basement bunker.
With their targets barricaded below, it looks like the mission has failed - until the remaining members of the Dozen (and the movie) reveal their horrifying final trump card:
They pour gasoline down the bunker’s air vents, followed by explosives.
Rather than cutting away, Aldrich shows the effects of this action - the camera coolly recording the fire torching people as they scream and dash about.
There is nothing glamorous, no visceral thrill or sense of triumph - just a cold blast of reality as we watch defenceless people burn to death.
Darkly humorous, and filled with great performances (Robert Ryan’s gleefully malicious general is a particular highlight), The Dirty Dozen remains a vital and unsettling take on Hollywood’s obsession with reel and real-life war.
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