A Bit of Film and War: "The Dirty Dozen"
The ensemble war film to end all ensemble war films.
A Bit of Film and War is a monthly column series covering war movies. I break down films from the classics to the obscure, detailing what wars they cover and if they’re worth checking out. It’s free for all subscribers to this Substack, but if you enjoy my writing, consider opting for a paid subscription. Doing so will give you access to exclusive in-depth pieces and my entire backlog of work. Your support is greatly appreciated!
Welcome back to A Bit of Film and War, my column where I break down the masterpieces, misfires, hidden gems, and obscure relics of war cinema! I kickstarted this series last year with The Guns of Navarone and returned to it in November with Condor’s Nest, which should give you an idea of how drastically different each entry can be from the next.
For 2025, I intend to fulfill my promise of this being a regular series. Readers of Foreign Perspectives are familiar with my weekly column Bonus Perspectives which consists of me covering the news and recommending media. A Bit of Film and War is essentially the latter, but with full focus on what is my favorite genre of cinema — the war movie. I had to skip December’s entry due to unexpectedly getting sick twice at the end of 2024 thanks to a strenuous part-time job in addition to the usual holiday commitments, but we’re now back on schedule. I have quit that job and will be dedicated all of my energy to this Substack and my freelance writing.
Expect a new entry of A Bit of Film and War to drop during the last week of each month in the place of Bonus Perspectives. This was supposed to go out a couple of days ago, but there was a brief delay due to a readjustment of my schedule. Consider it January’s entry for A Bit of Film and War, while my regular edition of Bonus Perspectives will be out in a few days. New content for paid subscribers will also be posted soon, so I appreciate your patience. But enough housekeeping, this time we’re looking at the definition of a stone cold classic with The Dirty Dozen. Onward into battle!
What’s the film?
The Dirty Dozen premiered on June 15, 1967 in New York City. Its initial venue was the Capitol Theatre, one of the flagship cinemas of the now defunct Loews Theatres chain and a highly coveted spot for major Hollywood releases. Capitol Theatre would shut its doors just a year later with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey being the final film screened.
The Dirty Dozen came here to Japan less than four months later on Oct. 10 under the title 特攻大作戦 or “The Great Suicide Attack Operation.” That more or less encapsulates the central theme of the story, but it certainly does not have the same ring. As future columns in this series will show, Japanese distributors gave war films like The Dirty Dozen very repetitive titles containing terms like “operation” and “invasion.” I’m sure at least a few people must have been somewhat confused when Play Dirty starring Michael Caine arrived a couple years later as 大侵略 or “The Great Invasion” and Kelly’s Heroes after that as 戦略大作戦 or “The Great Strategic Operation.”
Like most films of its era, The Dirty Dozen was adapted from a pre-existing bestselling novel. In this case, The Dirty Dozen written by E. M. Nathanson in 1965. The book supposedly sold over two million copies, but it’s pretty obscure today and appears to have not had much of a lasting impact compared to the more popular cinematic version. The film did gangbusters worldwide at the box office, grossing a very impressive $45.3 million against a budget of less than $5.5 million.
Professional critics were generally positive, but a few singled out The Dirty Dozen for having more violence than other films at the time. A young Roger Ebert in one of his earliest reviews praised the picture for its technical merits and setup, but negatively compared the carnage on screen to the everyday violence of Chicago. While probably not too unsettling by today’s standards, one has to remember that the late 1960s were a watershed moment for Anglosphere cinema. Filmmakers were trying to push the limits of censorship and works like The Dirty Dozen were the stepping stones that lead to the harder edge works later seen in the 1970s.
What’s the war?

World War II, but you can basically consider the story of both the novel and the film 95% fiction. Nathanson wrote his book after hearing a story about a renegade unit called the “Filthy Thirteen” which supposedly went on particularly dangerous missions and had little regard for military authority. It did exist as a demolition unit and its members were described as more insubordinate than the average soldier, but unlike The Dirty Dozen which depicts convicts being enlisted to fight, the Filthy Thirteen were not criminals.
The men reportedly only shaved once a week while undergoing training, hence their name. The film also shows this and their generally difficult personalities, so in those aspects there are some grains of truth. World War II was also an era when convicts could have their sentences commuted in exchange for military service. FDR gave 44 prisoners serving life sentences the chance to fight the Japanese, but it’s unclear how many went and how many died.
The Dirty Dozen’s narrative about 12 dangerous criminals being assembled to assault a Nazi-occupied chateau in France, however, is completely fictionalized.
What’s it about?
The plot is simple. Under “Project Amnesty,” the U.S. government recruits 12 convicts with special skills to infiltrate a French chateau ahead of D-Day and assassinate top-ranking Wehrmacht officers inside. The criminals are all bastards, being a salty lot of thieves, murderers, and rapists. Yet OSS Major John Reisman sees the potential for them to hone their skills together and promises any man who survives the mission a full pardon. Most of The Dirty Dozen revolves around the men’s training into commandos who can work as a team, as well as them overcoming their differences and proving to the doubtful higher ups that they are qualified to carry out the mission.
Who’s the director?

The name Robert Aldrich (not to be confused with Robert Altman who directed M*A*S*H which perhaps I’ll cover here some day) has little resonance with modern filmgoers, but in his prime during the Golden Age of Hollywood he was a pioneer of socially conscious films and the use of violence to tell narratives. He was a clear inspiration on Quentin Tarantino for one thing.
Aldrich dished out quite a number of pictures throughout his career and essentially worked nonstop as a director from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. His work covered everything from westerns to war movies, resulting in a pretty well-rounded filmography that attempted to push beyond genre tropes. Many of Aldrich’s films are pessimistic commentaries on the human condition, which some critics would argue are too overtly cynical. Yet his skillful blend of action with introspective themes fleshed out by collaborating screenwriters resulted in surprisingly deep movies that also managed to be commercial hits.
I admit that I have not seen much of Aldrich’s work apart from The Dirty Dozen, which is easily his most famous film. Plenty of his movies have been restored and released on Blu-ray, even here in Japan, so I hope to fix that soon. The Dirty Dozen is especially in need of a proper restoration though, as its sole Blu-ray release from 2007 came out at a time when the disc format was still new and the picture quality was quite mediocre. Let’s hope that someone like the Criterion Collection or Arrow Video puts out a proper 4K UHD disc by 2027 for the film’s 60th anniversary. If any of Aldrich’s films deserve that treatment, it’s certainly this one.
Who’s in it?
One of the best ensemble casts ever put together for any action film. For starters, The Dirty Dozen came out at a time when much of Hollywood’s leading men actually served in World War II. While the action itself is obviously stylized, the real life experience of the actors adds a sense of military professionalism and familiarity that simply cannot be recreated today.
You have Lee Marvin as John Reisman, a no-nonsense major who assembles the team while trying to convince his superiors that the Dirty Dozen can actually pull off the mission. The contrasting personalities of Ernest Borgnine (better known to millennials and zoomers as the voice of Mermaid Man in SpongeBob Squarepants) and George Kennedy end up being quite humorous when paired against Marvin’s character.
Then we have the Dozen themselves. Whether it’s Charles Bronson’s straight-laced demeanor of few words, Telly Savalas being the diabolical troublemaker, or Donald Sutherland being a total goofball, each viewer is inevitably going to have their own favorite character. It is no small task to deliver a consistently entertaining narrative with so many people involved, but screenwriters Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller were able to pull it off. Surprisingly, each character gets a decent amount of screen time and no one feels like they are being sidelined.
The Foreign Perspectives review
Talk about a fun time! I can only imagine what audiences in 1967 must have felt when The Dirty Dozen premiered. With superhero movies being decades away from hitting mainstream cinema, war movies and westerns were the closest things you could get to them back then. As such, you can basically consider this one your grandfather’s Avengers. The Dirty Dozen assembled Hollywood’s most famous male actors of the decade and threw them together into one huge crossover that was quite simply unlike any other war film.
Yet The Dirty Dozen deserves credit for going beyond mindless action. The setup seen in first two acts is essential for the destruction seen in the final act to be effective. Many go into the film thinking it will be constant explosions and gunfire, but that’s not how director Robert Aldrich does things. He was an auteur that aimed to turn genre conventions on their head and make something like a war film a bit more than just people killing each other.
While it takes place during World War II, The Dirty Dozen arrived on the scene in the late 1960s when the United States was intensifying its involvement with the Vietnam War. The premise of the titular characters being violent criminals as well as cannon fodder for a suicide mission undoubtedly appealed to Aldrich’s pessimism toward the U.S. government at the time. He surely would have dismissed critics who slammed his film as too violent given the fact that it was quite tame compared to the real-life conflicts going on both domestically and abroad.
The Dirty Dozen in typical Aldrich style flirts with cynicism, but there is enough humor to avoid depressing audiences. Some of the most hilarious moments are provided by Donald Sutherland, with the famous scene of him impersonating a general bound to leave most viewers in stitches. The film M*A*S*H was still three years away, but you really can see an embryonic form of Captain Hawkeye Pierce in Vernon L. Pinkley.
Of course, when Aldrich finally gives viewers what they want with the bombastic third act, he’s firing on all cylinders. The Dozen’s assault on the Wehrmacht-occupied chateau still holds up as a beautiful medley of pyrotechnics and bullets, being staged decades before CGI took away the hard edge from war films. It’s a complete slaughter with enough grenades, gasoline, and gunfire to shake a stick at. Over the top and bordering on ridiculous? Undoubtedly, but this is classic Hollywood action at its finest.
All of this works because despite his bleak worldview, Aldrich believes in his characters and wants you as the viewer to end up caring for them as well. That’s a hard ask given that some of these men are real sons of bitches, but the strong screenplay and methodical pacing gets you on their side in the end. While antiheroes are a dime a dozen today, they were just entering mainstream cinema in the 1960s due to the political and social climate of the time. I defy you to not feel at least a little bit sorry when certain characters bite the dust in The Dirty Dozen.
Interesting facts
As previously stated, many cast members in The Dirty Dozen actually participated in World War II. Lee Marvin was on the front lines of the Pacific Theater against the Japanese as a scout sniper and even sustained injuries from machine gun fire. He surely would have seen much death during his time in Marine Corps and like the characters in The Dirty Dozen, he also faced trouble for discipline-related issues. Ernest Borgnine had already joined the U.S. Navy years before the war started and reenlisted after America officially joined.
George Kennedy served in the U.S. Army for 16 years, participated in the Battle of the Bulge, and surprisingly enough gained a cultural interest in Japan after working for the Far East Network. He would go on to play foreign characters in Proof of the Man and Virus among other Japanese films. Certainly an underrated actor who deserves more recognition, so I hope to highlight more of his work in future columns.

Other cast members who were veterans included Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Robert Webber, Robert Ryan, Richard Jaeckel, and Clint Walker. Bronson had a particularly tough upbringing being born into an extremely impoverished coal mining family consisting of 15 children. After his father died, Bronson took over his job working in the mines and was only able to leave after enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Bronson’s entire life would be enough for its own movie, but he rarely ever discussed his personal life and preferred to let audiences come to their own conclusions about his characters.
Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Trini Lopez, and Donald Sutherland were born roughly a decade after their older cast members, making them too young to have served in World War II. Brown was most famous at the time for playing fullback with the Cleveland Browns and announced his retirement from football in favor of acting during the filming of The Dirty Dozen. Cassavetes went on to become one of the most important independent directors in Hollywood with works like Faces and A Woman Under the Influence and is frequently taught in film schools. Lopez more or less abandoned acting altogether, but became a successful singer and guitarist in the decades since.
Sutherland requires little introduction as one of the most acclaimed Canadian actors of all time. He would later become known for taking on a wide range of roles ranging from sympathetic heroes to sinister villains, but his earlier output was more comedic by comparison. His son Kiefer, who was born during the filming of The Dirty Dozen, is also a famous actor and is best remembered for Jack Bauer in 24. Donald Sutherland passed away in 2024 at the age of 88, leaving Stuart Cooper and Colin Maitland as the only surviving members of the Dozen.
The Dirty Dozen being a massive success at the box office meant that things couldn’t end at just one film. In 1970, Aldrich directed Too Late the Hero which is widely regarded as a spiritual successor. It shifts things to the Pacific Theater, but that’s a topic for a future edition of A Bit of Film and War. Italian director Enzo G. Castellari did his own take on a similar narrative premise with The Inglorious Bastards and Quentin Tarantino would later make his own war film under the title Inglourious Basterds. Quite the rabbit hole, isn’t it?
Throughout the 1980s there were a total of three TV movie sequels to The Dirty Dozen, but Aldrich had nothing to do with their production. Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel returned in 1985 for The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, but out of the trio only Borgnine stuck around for 1987’s The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission and 1988’s The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission. Interestingly enough, Telly Savalas did come back for the two latter sequels, but he plays a different role than his character from the original film. I haven’t seen these films, but given my love for cheesy action schlock I’m sure I’ll get to them eventually.
The Dirty Dozen has had considerable cultural influence on other works as well. In an homage to their original roles, George Kennedy, Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, and Clint Walker provided voice work for the Commando Elite in Joe Dante’s Small Soldiers. In the comic book world, Marvel’s Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen was a spin-off from Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and as one can tell from its title, directly took inspiration from The Dirty Dozen. DC’s Suicide Squad is more or less exactly the same concept, just with super villains.
Hollywood has thrown around ideas of remaking The Dirty Dozen over the last few years. While I would love to see a throwback to old school World War II films, that doesn’t seem to be what’s in development. David Ayer wants to direct his own take on it, but I question what the point would even be given that he disappointed audiences so badly in 2016 with Suicide Squad. He has openly stated that he has little interest in doing a Dirty Dozen film set in the past either, so let’s hope that it never gets made. Then again, the same can be said about most Hollywood remakes.
Should you see it?
Yes, most definitely. The Dirty Dozen stands strong as one of the best war films of its era, but also as a timeless classic that can still hold the attention of audiences today. Robert Aldrich’s direction keeps the proceedings compelling with tight pacing, a strong script, memorable characters, and an explosive final act that is well worth the journey to get there. The real World War II experience of the cast and masterful use of practical effects have kept The Dirty Dozen just as fresh and exciting as it was when it came out nearly 60 years ago.
Pretty much any action film that centers around a group of antiheroes or reluctant protagonists tasked with a seemingly impossible mission likely owes something to The Dirty Dozen, which is a testament to how much cultural force the picture has had over so many decades. For that reason, there shouldn’t be too much unfamiliarity if you’re seeing it for the first time. There have been many sequels, parodies, homages, and rip-offs, but accept no substitutes. Go back to the original and enjoy a hell of a time with the real Dirty Dozen.
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