The Dirty Dozen

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.

One of the most quintessential macho movies of all time.

The Dirty Dozen is directed by Robert Aldrich and adapted for the screen by Nunnally Johnson & Lukas Heller from the novel by E. M. Nathanson. It stars Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Richard Jaeckel, Robert Ryan and Jim Brown.

1944, just prior to D-Day….

Major Reisman (Marvin) is a none conformist kind of guy and he riles the higher brass no end, so it comes as no surprise to him that he is the man assigned the unenviable task of assembling a suicide squad of army criminals for a mission to destroy a château in France. This particular château has no military value as such, but as it is used by many of the Nazi...