SPOILERS***

I dread writing reviews for movies with jam-packed casts. I’m talking Altman-style. Twenty fucking people in one movie? Good God. Instead of laying out character details, I first have to eliminate the guys I won’t talk about. You know, the boring ones. I love movies like Gosford Park, but my notes tend to look like god damned essays rather than outlines. But you know what? I’m not too torn-up about reviewing The Dirty Dozen, a film sporting 13 different characters as its main cast. Ironically, I’m disappointed I don’t have more to write about.

It all starts with the bad-ass who is Lee Marvin, starring as Major Reisman. He is asked by his superiors to put together a top-notch squad to carry out a secret mission and kill several German Generals. And by “top-notch,” they mean a bunch of prisoners on death row. It’s almost a guaranteed suicide mission, so why not recruit a bunch of soon-to-be-dead criminals? Don’t you see the logic? Anyway, Reisman gathers twelve inmates (The Dirty Dozen) and begins a multi-week training session that culminates with a murderous invasion of a German party.

Oh yeah, the cast. A cast that probably spent most of its off-screen time arm-wrestling, chest-pounding and whistling at the make-up ladies, all while Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas watched with crossed arms and furrowed eyebrows from the corner. IMDB.com’s trivia section said the producers just threw a bunch of guys in a Royal Rumble match instead of holding auditions.

Did you really just look that up? Anyway, at the center we have Marvin and the equally awesome Charles Bronson (as Joseph Wladislaw), whose butchered German-speaking sounds tougher than shark leather. Then there’s Jim Brown, an NFL fullback who you might recognize as the guy who killed a bunch of aliens in Mars Attack! Both John Cassavetes (as Victor Franco) and Savalas (as Archer Maggott) look like they’ve won a few knife fights in their days. And Clint Walker (as Samson Posey) supposedly received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame by squeezing his 16-inch biceps around a committee member’s neck and administering the world’s worst noogie.

So yeah, it’s an impressive cast that features some quality acting, especially by Marvin as the general and Savalas as the egregiously religious nutjob. But Savalas had an advantage in portraying the most complex individual in a movie filled with cursory characters. It seems strange for a film that literally dedicates a scene to each and every character, but as I looked at my notes thorughout the film, I found myself unable to expand on what those scenes gave us. Sure, the scene with Posey let us know he’s gentle giant with a deadly temper, but so what? Wladislaw’s question-and-answer session literally reveals nothing, other than an inability to understand simple instructions. So they decide to thrust him into a leadership role within the group? I’m not following.

Director Robert Aldrich’s films have never been very character-driven; rather, they take interesting characters with deeply embedded mysteries that unravel throughout. Maybe this is what crippled both Attack and The Dirty Dozen. I look at films like Kiss Me Deadly and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte and don’t see a place for their styles in films laden with the realities of war. While Attack treated its characters like cartoons, you have to admire The Dirty Dozen for knowing its place. Nothing is over-stylized or fatigued, minus its clear anti-capital punishment messages. Instead, it’s a character-focused drama that accurately captures the unity of a group.

Whereas Aldrich could experiment with staircases and the lighting advantages of black-and-white film in his earlier features, The Dirty Dozen takes place in an open landscape that doesn’t lend itself to experimentation. Aldrich temporarily abandons his flamboyant filmmaking to focus on well-placed shots that capture the unity of the group. I guess that’s the main focus here; The Dirty Dozen is a group of men who have been shunned by society and thrown to the dogs, so naturally they form a bond. But the film lets the male commraderie build slowly, instead of lazily inserting it. Racial and philosphical dilemmas exist in the group, which is good, but the crutch that is “lack of character development” takes away from most of the film’s stregnths. Not that I don’t feel bad for any character that dies during battle, but I don’t feel the weight of it on my shoulders. Sure, the group is saddened by a loss, but shouldn’t I be affected as well? It also takes away from its anti-war and anti-death penalty sentiments, which don’t require any more than well-developed characters to hit home with viewers. Whoops…

It’s as hard to elaborate on this film as it is to be cynical about it, because it’s damn fun to watch. The film never chooses to be melodramatic, which sort-of fits with the faceless characters. Instead of focusing on motives and secrets and what-not, we just get to enjoy the film. It’s loaded with matter-of-fact humor and intriguing action, along with two lengthy, dynamite scenes: one where the Dirty Dozen proves its legitimacy by winning a U.S. Army war game, and another where the guys murder a bunch of Nazis, which may as well served as Quentin Tarantino’s inspiration for the bloody Inglorious Basterds. So sure, after 150 minutes of film, I’m troubled by the fact my notes were shorter for The Dirty Dozen than they were for Step Up 3D. But really, that doesn’t really shine an accurate light on this entertaining film. And hey, I’m not going to complain about having to take less notes.

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