The Dirty Dozen

Use criminals for good?

This movie was quite a thing given the amount of censorship that was in place at the time of it's release (1967). It did cause a number of critics to write unfavourable reviews. Thankfully then as now most people take the critics reviews with a major grain of salt, the box office revenue did make it very successful.



The main idea behind this film is take a number of prisoners on death row or serving life sentences and offer them a slim chance at freedom. All they need to do is join the army as a special unit, train and then survive what should be a suicide mission.

The action scenes are still powerful and gritty enough for most of today's audiences. The story is set during the second world war, and the allies want to cause as much trouble for the Nazi's as possible without risking the lives of decent men.

Can the new recruits function as a team without killing each other or their recruiting officer? This question is handled as you would expect from a American, Hollywood movie, which is to make their commander/recruiter the toughest man in the army. Hence these recruits aren't a problem for him.

There is a fair amount of action, and unlike a lot of Hollywood movies not everyone makes it home alive. I won't mention which ones do in case you haven't seen it. If you like world war 2 movies and haven't seen this one, and don't need it to be factual, then you will probably enjoy it.