DIRTY DOZEN - HD DVD review

The fact is, the better looking the original print, the better looking the HD-DVD transfer is going to be. "The Dirty Dozen" was a good-looking MGM print, no doubt cleaned and restored by Warner Bros. for an even better high-definition experience. So, if the standard-definition, Special Edition DVD version of this movie looked good, the HD-DVD version is an improvement still.

Call this one the son of "The Great Escape" and the stepchild of "The Magnificent Seven." MGM's 1967 release "The Dirty Dozen" uses an all-star ensemble cast to produce one of the most-popular action-adventure war films of all time, and after nearly forty years, it stands the test of time. It's as much fun as ever.

Credit three people mainly with the film's success: E.M. Nathanson for his novel on which the movie is based (screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller), Nathanson saying that while it was fiction, he was inspired by legends of such things actually taking place; director Robert Aldrich, an old hand at action thrillers with movies like "Kiss Me Deadly," "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," "The Flight of the Phoenix," "Emperor of the North," and "The Longest Yard" to his credit; and Lee Marvin, a former Marine riding high as an Oscar winner for "Cat Ballou" two years earlier and "Point Blank" the same year.

The story is pretty simple and straightforward, but the twists along the way and our involvement with the characters carry it much further. Marvin plays Major John Reisman, a remarkably cynical army officer, short on discipline, who does not gladly suffer fools. In 1944, just prior to D-Day, his superiors assign him to oversee "Project Amnesty," a military strategy in which he is "to select twelve general prisoners convicted and sentenced to death or long terms of imprisonment for murder, rape, robbery, and for other crimes of violence and so forth, and train and qualify these prisoners in as much of the business of behind-the-lines operations as they can absorb for a brief but unspecified time. You will then deliver them secretly into the European mainland just prior to the invasion, and attack and destroy the target specified."

The target? A rest-and-recreation conference center for senior German officers on leave. Reisman and his men are to parachute in and kill as many of the officers as possible. The army will grant amnesty to those men who survive. How does Reisman regard the scheme? He thinks lunatics must have designed the project.

Later, an army psychologist (Ralph Meeker) interviewing the twelve chosen men describes the group as "just about the most twisted, antisocial bunch of psychopathic deformities I have ever run into." "Well," responds Reisman, having adjusted to the situation, "I can't think of a better way to fight a war."

Not only is Marvin's Reisman a demanding SOB with a tender heart beneath his cold exterior, the rest of his command group are just as endearing, and they're performed by a stellar cast. Charles Bronson plays Joseph T. Waldislaw, a former officer himself, who now hates officers in general, and especially generals. Bronson essentially recreates his character from "The Great Escape." Ex-footballer Jim Brown plays Robert T. Jefferson, a victim of race hatred. John Cassavetes plays Victor R. Franko, a former small-time Chicago gangster and big-time hard-ass troublemaker. Pop singer Trini Lopez, in his screen debut, plays Pedro Jiminez, a guitar player and singer, no surprise. Telly Savalas plays Archer J. Maggott, a seriously psychopathic, Southern, Bible-thumping racist who believes everything he does is God's will. Donald Sutherland plays Vernon L. Pinkley, a goofy sort, who practically steals the show when he impersonates a general. Clint Walker (early television's Cheyenne Bodie) plays Samson Posey, a gentle giant who does not like people pushing him around. And there are Tom Busby as Milo Vladek, Ben Carruthers as Glenn Gilpen, Colin Maitland as Seth Sawyer, Stuart Cooper as Roscoe Lever, and Al Mancini as Tassos Bravos. The group get their "Dirty Dozen" nickname when one morning they refuse to shave in cold water, and Reisman decides in that case they won't shave or shower again.

In addition to the men of Reinsman's little band of misfits, there are even more supporting players than you can shake a baton at. Ernest Borgnine plays Major General Worden, the officer who assigns Reisman his new duty and oversees the project. Richard Jaeckel plays Sgt. Clyde Bowren, the strict but kindhearted MP in charge of the prisoners. George Kennedy (could it be a military movie without George Kennedy?) plays Major Max Armbruster, one of Reisner's friends and sympathizers. Robert Webber plays Brig. General Denton, a man dead set against the project from the start and even more dead set against Reisman leading it. And Robert Ryan plays Col. Everett Breed, a stiff-necked, by-the-book idiot who causes more trouble than he's worth but provides a perfect foil for Reisman.

Sure, the characters are stereotypes and the proceedings are clichéd, but isn't that the way we want our action movies? The filmmakers initially offered John Wayne the Reisman part but he turned it down, which if he hadn't might have made the movie even more stereotyped than it already is. In any case, the part went fortuitously to Marvin, and it's hard to think he could have been bettered.

The movie tries to be as hard and realistic as possible, but the clichés, the off-the-wall whimsy, and the far-fetched theatrics keep it securely out of "Saving Private Ryan" territory. Then, too, we have to remember the time MGM released the film, 1967, and that studios had to conform to the conventions of the day. Therefore, you won't find a single soldier--murderer, rapist, robber, or thug--utter a solitary profanity. What you will find, however, is more characterization, personality, interaction, and dialogue supplementing the all-out action than you would find in most adventure movies today.

The first quarter of the movie concerns the introduction of the men; the second quarter describes their subsequent training; the third quarter involves their participation in a series of war games; and the final quarter details the raid itself, which is almost anticlimactic.

"The Dirty Dozen" hasn't quite the humor or the pathos of "The Great Escape" (nor that great theme music), but it is still eminently watchable in an exaggerated sort of way, and it passes a quick 149 minutes.

Video:
Warner Bros. transferred "The Dirty Dozen" to disc in a picture size of 1.78:1, fully filling up a 16x9 widescreen television. The Internet Movie Database lists the movie's aspect ratio at 2.20:1, which according to Richard W. Haines, author of "Technicolor Movies," was its roadshow size, blown up and cropped from the original 1.85:1 camera negative.

I noticed some small degree of grain in the latest standard-definition transfer, especially in the outdoor second-unit footage, but I thought it contributed well to the film's overall naturalistic atmosphere. In the HD-DVD transfer the grain is even more clearly noticeable, but it is never continuous and never a distraction. The colors are beautiful, deep, rich, and realistic; and object definition is excellent. Close-ups are especially well defined, though long shots less so; but, then, they were probably less defined on the original film stock, too. For a film four decades old, or for any film of any age for that matter, "The Dirty Dozen" remains a pleasure to the eyes.

Audio:
Warner Bros. remastered the sound of the main feature in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 to good effect. The film won an Oscar for sound effects, and the effects come through loud and clear, at least in the front channels. Specific rear-channel locality is limited, as we might expect, until the very end of the picture, the climactic fight sequence. There is also a touch of hardness to the midrange and highs and some occasional nasality, but like the faint film grain I mentioned earlier, it is hardly distracting. The sonics are very dynamic, more so now in DD+, with a wide front-channel stereo spread, a strong transient impact, and a satisfyingly deep bass.

Extras:
The HD-DVD contains all the extras found on the two-disc SD Special Edition and contains them all on a single side. The biggest bonus on the disc is a complete second movie--although in standard definition--a made-for-TV sequel, "The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission." Eighteen years had gone by before MGM decided to make a sequel to their longtime hit, so in 1985 they talked Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel into reprising their old roles. Apparently, the rest of the actors (whose characters survived in the original movie) read the script for the new film and declined to participate.

"The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission" became the first in a series of sequels made in the late 1980s, most of them with Borgnine only. As Marvin would pass away a year later, the temptation for him to do another passed with him. This sequel is nothing short of awful. A Nazi general wants to save Germany by assassinating Adolf Hitler. The Allies don't want this to happen because they feel Hitler is so incompetent that with him in command the War will soon be over. As a result, the army calls upon Reisner and a new "dirty dozen" convicted rejects to stop the assassination by parachuting into German-occupied France and killing the Nazi general planning the hit on the Fuehrer.

Not only is the sequel a virtual repeat of the original, Marvin and Borgnine by this time were getting much too old for their roles. Although no more than a few months were supposed to have gone by between the action of the first film and this one, the two actors appear a good twenty years older. Worse, like the rest of the actors in this dead-end affair, both Marvin and Borgnine appear to be reading their scripts from signboards. It is only Jaeckel who displays any sign of life, but his role is so small we hardly notice. And things only get worse. What before was a colorful bunch of varied prisoners is now a collection of dull, zombielike nonentities who even look alike. The script is no longer simply clichéd and stereotyped, it's sluggish and boring. Annoyingly, you can also tell when the television broadcast inserted every commercial break, and the action (what little there is) comes to a crashing halt each time, the movie limping awkwardly from one episode to the next.

The TV sequel is presented in a standard-def, 1.33:1 screen ratio, the image soft and comparatively blurred; and the sound is in Dolby Digital Plus 2.0 monaural. The less said about either, the better. Needless to say, my ratings at the bottom of the page apply to the original movie only. "Next Mission" gets a 3/10.

More important, the extras include an audio commentary by cast members Jim Brown, Trini Lopez, Stuart Cooper, and Colin Maitland; the producer Kenneth Hyman; original novelist E.M. Nathanson; film historian David J. Schow; and military advisor to movies Captain Dale Dye. It's Dye who starts things off by providing both a historical perspective as well as a film perspective on the movie. If you choose, you can also watch a three-minute introduction to the main film by co-star Ernest Borgnine, who must be about 110 by now but looks and sounds the same as ever, a remarkable fellow.

Next, there are two newly made and fairly lengthy documentaries. The first is on the making of the original movie, "Armed and Deadly: The Making of The Dirty Dozen," thirty minutes, with various of the filmmakers and cast members reminiscing--people like Ernest Borgnine, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, George Kennedy, Trini Lopez, and Clint Walker. The second documentary is "The Filthy Thirteen: Real Stories from Behind the Lines," a forty-seven minute segment about the real-life airborne division that inspired author E.M. Nathanson to write his fictional "Dirty Dozen." Finally, there is a twenty-nine minute vintage recruitment documentary, "Marine Corps Combat Leadership Skills," with the late Lee Marvin narrating, and a vintage featurette, a promotional really, "Operation Dirty Dozen."

Things wrap up with thirty-seven scene selections, but no chapter insert; a widescreen theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles. As always, Warner Bros. provide pop-up menus, a zoom-and-pan feature, an indicator of elapsed time, and an Elite Red HD case.

Parting Thoughts:
It's hard to beat a really good action adventure, and the original "Dirty Dozen" is among the best of its kind, now looking better in HD and sounding better in Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 than it probably ever did in a movie theater. It hasn't the essential realism of, say, "The Guns of Navarone," but thanks to the firm grasp that director Robert Aldrich and star Lee Marvin brought to the picture, "The Dirty Dozen" is almost irresistible. Sure, it overstates the heroics and emphasizes military maneuvers that probably never could have happened the way they are depicted, but we expect action-adventure flicks to embroider reality. This one does so without stretching credibility to the breaking point and provides a good time in the process.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "The Dirty Dozen" for four Oscars: Best Supporting Actor (John Cassavetes), Best Film Editing (Michael Luciano), and Best Sound and Best Sound Effects (John Poyner). As I said before, the film won for Sound Effects, so keep your volume control handy. I understand that the Academy might have nominated Robert Aldrich for Best Director, too, had there not been some controversy surrounding the final raid. I'll leave it to you to listen to Borgnine's introduction and the movie's audio commentary to decide if they robbed Aldrich or not.