A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Dirty Dozen

The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Director: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes

"No, SIR, I will not be shaving, SIR"

So there's pure entertainment, there's the message movie, and there's something that falls somewhere in-between and that would be The Dirty Dozen.

War is hell -- check. But rebellion is cool -- check.

If you believe Sleepless in Seattle, this is a boy movie in the same way that An Affair to Remember is a girl movie, but I'm a girl and I don't really like An Affair to Remember and once this goes on I can't stop watching it. It's like when I discovered that The Three Musketeers were really kind of cool even though it was a boy book. I don't want to be a musketeer, but I wouldn't mind dating one. I feel the same way about boy movies, even ones where the guys don't bathe for a few weeks. I like watching guys do their guy things. That's pretty simple, right?

I also like John Cassavetes. He's intense and crazy and says whatever comes into his head and he's totally inspired as Victor Franco, so much that it's hard to believe he did this movie just to get money to make his own films. There's a lot of love for Franco coming out of Cassavetes, and this makes him a magnet for the audience. Sure, maybe you sort of care that Posey is going to "learn letters," but what you really want to know is: What is Franco going to do next?

Reisman (Lee Marvin) taunts Posey while
Franco (John Cassavetes) cheers from the sidelines

Not that the others are slacking. Even Ralph Meeker makes the most of his short role as the psychiatrist ("You've got one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near-idiots --- and the rest I don't even wanna think about"), and George Kennedy is so amazingly low-key that it's hard to believe this was made the same year he was huffing about "Lucille" in Cool Hand Luke.

But aside from Franco, the one you really care about is Jefferson, played by Jim Brown. He's the only one who seems normal. Even Bronson has some issues and he's something of a post anyway, so, by using the wanting-to-date-a-musketeer standard, Bronson's Wladislaw isn't quite making it. (and Telly Savalas? Maggott?? Are you kidding?) But Jefferson is intelligent, calm, dependable and when you need a guy to ditch grenades down into air vents filled with gasoline, he's your man.

"Blow it, Jefferson!"

It's not a perfect movie by any stretch. You know, maybe it doesn't really make sense that hookers would want to dance with stinky soldiers or that blowing up a chateau of Nazis is going to help the war effort. But it's a good night's fun.