Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Director: Robert Aldrich
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Over the years, The Dirty Dozen has taken its place alongside that other commercial classic, The Magnificent Seven. The violence which liberal critics found so offensive has survived intact. Aldrich sets up dispensable characters with no past and no future, as Marvin reprieves a bunch of death row prisoners, forges them into a tough fighting unit, and leads them on a suicide mission into Nazi France. Apart from the values of team spirit, cudgeled by Marvin into his dropout group, Aldrich appears to be against everything: anti-military, anti-Establishment, anti-women, anti-religion, anti-culture, anti-life ('We got enough here to blow up the whole world'). Overriding such nihilism is the super-crudity of Aldrich's energy and his humour, sufficiently cynical to suggest that the whole thing is a game anyway, a spectacle that demands an audience. (The Mean Machine offers the reverse: American football as total war). The then-unknown Donald Sutherland's moronic performance is a treat.Author: CPe
Cast & crew
Director: Robert Aldrich
Producer: Kenneth Hyman
Cast: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Ryan, George Kennedy, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, Trini Lopez, Ben Carruthers, Clint Walker, Stuart Cooper, Al Mancini, Colin Maitland, Tom Busby full cast
Genre(s): War
Duration: 150 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now