5/10
I did not finish The Dirty Dozen. I enjoyed the first half. I started losing interest somewhere in the middle. I stopped watching before the climax. I do not know how it ends. The 5 reflects an honest accounting of that experience: a film with enough going for it to keep me watching for the first hour, not enough to keep me watching for the second, and one specific anachronistic line of dialogue that threw me out of the movie hard enough that I never fully recovered. The Dirty Dozen is the better-known cousin of The Devil’s Brigade, released a year earlier in 1967 to massive box office success. The two films share the misfit-soldiers-as-elite-unit structure. They are not the same film, and after sitting through both, I do not think The Dirty Dozen is the better one.
This is going to be a different kind of review because the experience was different. I cannot tell you what the climax does. I can tell you why I never got there.
The Setup
Major John Reisman is given an impossible assignment by the brass: take twelve convicted soldiers (men sentenced to death or long prison terms for murder, rape, and other capital offenses) and turn them into an elite commando unit. The mission is to parachute behind German lines and assassinate German officers vacationing at a French chateau. The men are told that if they survive the mission, their sentences will be reviewed favorably. They are not promised pardons. They are promised a chance.
The premise is darker than The Devil’s Brigade. The Devil’s Brigade was about misfits who were difficult but not criminals. The Dirty Dozen is about criminals who were convicted of serious offenses. The moral framework is therefore murkier from the start. The film knows this and leans into it. Reisman is not training heroes. He is training expendable killers. The mission itself, which involves burning Germans alive in a basement, is a war crime by any reasonable standard. The film is conscious of this. The film does not entirely judge it.
The Cast
This is the strongest element. Lee Marvin plays Reisman as a man who has seen enough of the army’s bureaucratic absurdity to enjoy being given a unit he does not have to pretend is respectable. Marvin’s natural authority carries every scene he is in, and the film leans on that authority appropriately.
Ernest Borgnine plays General Worden, the officer who assigns the mission. Borgnine and Marvin had history going back to From Here to Eternity and Bad Day at Black Rock, and the two of them play their scenes with the comfort of actors who know each other’s rhythms. Charles Bronson plays Joseph Wladislaw, the most level-headed of the convicts. John Cassavetes plays Victor Franko and got an Oscar nomination for it, which the performance earns. Telly Savalas plays Archer Maggott, the religious psychopath, and brings to the role the kind of unhinged intensity that he would later use to carry Kojak in a very different register. Donald Sutherland plays Vernon Pinkley, the dim-witted convict, in one of his earliest significant film roles. Jim Brown plays Robert Jefferson in his second film, fresh off his career as one of the NFL’s greatest running backs.
Clint Walker plays Samson Posey. Trini Lopez plays Pedro Jiminez (Lopez was a pop singer who left the production over a contract dispute, which is why his character is killed off relatively early). Richard Jaeckel plays Sergeant Bowren. George Kennedy plays Major Armbruster. Robert Ryan plays Colonel Breed, Reisman’s rival officer. Ralph Meeker plays the psychologist assigned to evaluate the unit.
This is a serious cast. The film knows it has assembled a serious cast and gives most of them at least one moment to register. The Cassavetes performance specifically is one of the film’s strongest elements, and the Sutherland scene where Pinkley impersonates a general during an inspection (“Very pretty, colonel, very pretty. But can they fight?”) is a small comic masterpiece that the film deserves credit for.
The Word “Groovy”
This is the moment I cannot get past. A young Donald Sutherland, playing Private Vernon Pinkley, uses the word “groovy” in dialogue. The film is set during World War II. American soldiers in 1944 did not say “groovy.” The word entered mainstream slang in the mid-1960s as part of hippie counterculture. A WWII GI would have said “swell” or “keen” or “the cat’s pajamas” or any of a dozen other period-appropriate options. He would not have said “groovy.” That word would not exist in his vocabulary for another twenty years.
The line is in the script. Sutherland delivers it. The director did not cut it. The editor left it in. Multiple people working on a film about American soldiers in 1944 looked at this line and decided it was fine. It is not fine. It is the kind of small period violation that breaks the immersive contract a war film signs with its audience. The film is asking me to believe I am watching soldiers in 1944. The dialogue keeps telling me I am watching 1967.
The specific “groovy” line is not widely cited in critical reviews of The Dirty Dozen. Most contemporary critics focused on the film’s violence rather than its dialogue. But the broader problem with Pinkley as a character has been noted by multiple critics. The character feels less anchored to 1944 than the other members of the unit. Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com has observed that the war-games sequence prefigured M*A*S*H, and that Sutherland was cast in M*A*S*H specifically because Robert Altman enjoyed Pinkley’s general-impersonation scene. Other critics have described Pinkley as an early draft of Captain Hawkeye Pierce, the explicitly counterculture-era character Sutherland would play three years later. The Pinkley-as-proto-Hawkeye reading is not a defense of the writing. It is a diagnosis of the same problem I noticed when I heard “groovy” come out of his mouth.
The reason Pinkley feels so untethered from 1944 turns out to be partly accidental. Sutherland originally had one line of dialogue in the script: “Number two, sir!” The general-impersonation scene was originally written for Clint Walker as Samson Posey, who refused it on the grounds that he found the scene demeaning to his Native American character. Director Robert Aldrich pointed at Sutherland on set and gave him the bit on the spot. After Sutherland nailed it, Aldrich kept inventing new scene-stealing moments for the unknown Canadian actor. The Pinkley we see in the finished film is therefore largely improvised business built around Sutherland’s natural register. That register, in 1967, was already drifting toward the hippie-adjacent comic mode Sutherland would inhabit fully in M*A*S*H and Kelly’s Heroes. In Kelly’s Heroes, released in 1970, Sutherland played Oddball, an openly anachronistic hippie soldier dropped into a WWII tank crew. The character is intentionally out of period. Pinkley is unintentionally out of period. The same actor, three years later, played the deliberate version of what Pinkley accidentally became.
The “groovy” line is one specific instance of a broader problem: Pinkley as a character was built around a 1967 actor’s instincts rather than a 1944 soldier’s vocabulary, and the cracks show. The fact that critics have been noting the proto-Hawkeye quality of Pinkley for decades, without specifically calling out the “groovy” line, suggests the line is the small visible symptom of a larger structural issue rather than an isolated error. The film let Sutherland improvise his way into a 1960s character because the improvisation was funny. The improvisation was funny. It was also wrong for the period.
What makes the moment specifically painful is that Sutherland is otherwise excellent in this film. The inspection scene where Pinkley impersonates a general is one of the most quoted moments in war comedy. Sutherland was thirty-one when this film was shot, and The Dirty Dozen was the role that launched his career toward M*A*S*H, Klute, and everything that followed. He is good in the part. The line is not his fault. The line is the writer’s fault and the director’s fault and the editor’s fault, and Sutherland is the one stuck delivering it. But the word lands in his mouth, in a film about 1944, and the moment cannot be unheard.
I noticed it. I could not unnotice it. Every subsequent piece of dialogue had to fight through the suspicion that the writers were not actually paying attention to the period they were supposedly recreating. The suspicion compounded across the runtime. By the time the film moved into its training sequences, I was no longer trusting the film to know what year it was in.
For Writers
Period-accurate dialogue is the most underrated discipline in historical fiction. Readers and viewers do not consciously catalogue every word. They unconsciously track tone, register, and slang for period consistency. When a single word violates the period, the reader does not always know why their attention broke. They know something feels off. They may not be able to name what. They will adjust their trust in the work accordingly. If you are writing a story set in any period other than now, build a slang glossary for the era before you start drafting. Know which words your characters can use and which words they cannot. Check every piece of dialogue against the glossary in revision. The work is invisible when done well. The damage is permanent when done poorly. “Groovy” in a WWII film is not a small error. It is a contract breach. The audience came to see 1944. You owe them 1944 in every line.
Why It Became Boring
The middle of the film is where I lost interest. The training sequences run long. The internal conflicts between the convicts are repetitive. Maggott’s escalating religious mania becomes predictable once the audience figures out where it is going. The Reisman-Breed rivalry is established and then keeps being established without progressing. The mock-mission exercise where the Dozen humiliates Breed’s regular unit is fun the first time and not as fun the second time the film leans on the same dynamic.
The film is two hours and thirty minutes long. The Devil’s Brigade is two hours and ten minutes. The extra twenty minutes in The Dirty Dozen show up in the middle, and the middle is where the film cannot quite sustain its momentum. By the time the mission preparation began, I had been watching for what felt like a much longer film than I had signed up for, and I checked out. I do not remember the specific scene where I stopped paying attention. I remember the gradual realization that I was no longer invested in any of the men I had started to know.
What Works
The film is not bad. It is mediocre, which is harder to write about than bad. The cast is excellent. The premise is strong. The dark moral framework is more sophisticated than most 1960s war films attempted. The Cassavetes performance is the kind of work that holds up across multiple viewings if you make it to multiple viewings. The Sutherland inspection scene is genuinely funny. The Marvin-Borgnine chemistry pays off every time they share a scene.
If you watch the first hour and turn it off, you will have seen the parts of the film that work best. If you keep going, your mileage will vary. Many people love this film. It made a hundred million dollars on a five and a half million dollar budget. It was the highest-grossing film of 1967. The audience that found it then has stayed loyal to it for almost sixty years. I am not in that audience. The audience that exists is real and their love for the film is legitimate. I am reporting my experience, not theirs.
The Devil’s Brigade Comparison
The Dirty Dozen released in 1967. The Devil’s Brigade released in 1968. The two films share enough structural DNA that the comparison is unavoidable. I covered some of this in my Devil’s Brigade review, and the conclusion has not changed across the additional viewings of The Dirty Dozen that I attempted: The Devil’s Brigade is the better film. The reasons are specific. The Devil’s Brigade is based on a true story rather than a fictional one, which gives the stakes a different weight. The Devil’s Brigade earns its enemies-to-allies arc more carefully through the bar fight and subsequent training scenes. The Devil’s Brigade respects the period in a way The Dirty Dozen does not (no anachronistic slang that I noticed across six viewings). The Devil’s Brigade has a lower body count of major characters at the climax, which means the deaths matter more. The Devil’s Brigade is twenty minutes shorter and uses every minute of its runtime productively.
The Dirty Dozen was the bigger commercial success. The Devil’s Brigade was the better film. These are not the same metric. Both can be true simultaneously, and they are.
The Director
Robert Aldrich directed. Aldrich had a strong career: Kiss Me Deadly, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, The Longest Yard, and others. He was a skilled craftsman who knew how to manage a large ensemble. The Dirty Dozen is one of his most successful films commercially and one of his most uneven creatively. The pacing problems in the middle are partially Aldrich’s responsibility. The film could have been thirty minutes shorter and stronger for it. Aldrich was not the kind of director to trim aggressively, and the film shows the consequences.
The Verdict
A 5. The film is mediocre on rewatch, mediocre on first watch, and mediocre as a piece of war cinema judged against its peers. The cast is the reason it is not lower. The period violations and the bloated middle are the reasons it is not higher. I did not finish watching it. I do not know how it ends. I am told the ending involves the assault on the chateau and the burning of Germans in a cellar. I have read enough about the film to know the general shape of the climax. I have not earned the right to evaluate that climax because I did not sit through the rest of the film to get there.
If you want to watch a misfit-unit war film, watch The Devil’s Brigade. If you want to watch a Lee Marvin performance, watch Point Blank, also from 1967, which is the better Marvin vehicle by a significant margin. If you want to watch The Dirty Dozen specifically, you may end up loving it the way many people do. I did not. The 5 is honest. The honesty is the point.
FAQ
How does The Dirty Dozen compare to The Devil’s Brigade?
They share the same basic structure: misfit soldiers assembled into an elite unit, trained under a tough commander, deployed on a dangerous mission. The Dirty Dozen is the bigger commercial hit and the more famous film. The Devil’s Brigade is, in my view, the better film. The Devil’s Brigade is based on a true story, has tighter pacing, respects its period more carefully, and earns its character arcs more methodically. See my Devil’s Brigade review for the longer comparison.
Is The Dirty Dozen based on a true story?
No. The film is based on E.M. Nathanson’s 1965 novel of the same name. Nathanson claimed his novel was based on a real WWII unit called the Filthy Thirteen, a US Army Pathfinder demolition team that was famously rough around the edges. The actual Filthy Thirteen were not convicted criminals. They were regular soldiers who happened to be undisciplined. The Dirty Dozen takes the disreputable-unit premise and exaggerates it into convicts on a suicide mission. The mission depicted in the film is fictional.
Did the film really feature anachronistic dialogue?
Yes. A young Donald Sutherland, playing Private Vernon Pinkley, uses the word “groovy” at one point. The word entered mainstream slang in the 1960s and would not have been used by an American soldier in 1944. WWII GIs would have said “swell” or “keen” or other period-appropriate slang. The specific “groovy” line is not widely cited in critical reviews. The broader pattern of Pinkley feeling like a 1960s character dropped into 1944 has been noted by multiple critics over the decades, with several describing the character as an early draft of Captain Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H. Sutherland’s role expanded during filming through improvisation rather than scripted dialogue, which explains why Pinkley sounds less period-correct than the other members of the unit. Sutherland himself is excellent in the role, particularly in the famous inspection scene where Pinkley impersonates a general. The anachronism is the writer’s failure and the director’s failure, not the actor’s.
Was Pinkley always supposed to be a major character?
No. Sutherland was hired with one line of dialogue: “Number two, sir!” The general-impersonation scene was originally written for Clint Walker, who refused it as demeaning to his Native American character. Director Robert Aldrich pointed at Sutherland on set and gave him the bit on the spot. Sutherland’s performance was so good that Aldrich kept inventing new business for him through the rest of the shoot. The Pinkley we see in the film is therefore largely the result of improvisation built around Sutherland’s natural comic register. That improvisation made his career: producer Ingo Preminger saw the general scene and cast Sutherland in M*A*S*H, which made him a star. It also made Pinkley sound less like 1944 and more like 1967, because the improvising actor was a 1967 actor.
Why did Trini Lopez’s character die so early?
Lopez was a pop singer cast in the film who left the production partway through filming over a contract dispute with the studio. The script was rewritten to kill off his character (Pedro Jiminez) during a training parachute jump, which is why Jiminez has less screen time than the other members of the unit. Lopez has spoken about the decision in subsequent interviews as one he regretted because the film became a major success and he was not in it for the climactic mission.
Was the film controversial when it came out?
Yes. The mission to burn German officers alive in a basement was considered morally questionable even by the standards of 1960s war cinema. Some critics objected to the film’s portrayal of the act as either heroic or acceptable. Other critics defended the film as a deliberately dark meditation on the moral compromises of war. The film does not entirely judge the act and trusts the audience to bring its own moral framework. The debate has continued in war film criticism for decades.
How accurate is the film’s portrayal of WWII commando operations?
Not very. Real WWII commando units (the British Commandos, the US Army Rangers, the First Special Service Force, the Office of Strategic Services teams) were not assembled from convicted criminals. They were assembled from volunteers who passed selection tests. The fictional premise of using death-row inmates for a high-risk mission is dramatically convenient but historically baseless. The Devil’s Brigade, which is based on a real unit, is closer to how American commando operations actually worked in WWII.
Did the cast members have actual WWII experience?
Several did. Lee Marvin served as a Marine in the Pacific theater and was wounded at Saipan. Charles Bronson served in the Army Air Forces as a tail gunner on B-29s. Ernest Borgnine served in the Navy. Telly Savalas served in the Army. The combat experience of the cast informs the film’s portrayal of soldiering in ways that are visible if you know to look for them, particularly in Marvin’s body language and his comfort with weapons.
Are there sequels to The Dirty Dozen?
Yes, and they should be avoided. Three made-for-television sequels followed in the 1980s: The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (1985), The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (1987), and The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission (1988). Lee Marvin reprised the Reisman role in the first sequel before his death in 1987. The sequels are widely considered to be cash-grabs that traded on the original’s reputation without matching its quality. Stick to the original if you want to engage with this material.
Should I watch The Dirty Dozen if I have not seen it?
Maybe. If you are a completionist about 1960s war cinema, yes. If you love Lee Marvin or John Cassavetes specifically, yes. If you are looking for the best example of a misfit-unit war film, no: watch The Devil’s Brigade instead. If you have a low tolerance for period violations or pacing problems, no. The film has its audience and many people love it. I am not one of them, and I am reporting my experience honestly so that you can decide whether your experience is likely to match mine.