Reaction To A Reaction: DIRTIER BY THE DOZEN*

I recently watched a reaction video by Dawn Marie Anderson, a young (20s-30s) young Scotish woman to one of my favorite movies, The Dirty Dozen.

She liked it but her specific reaction led me to a couple of observations.

First, she noted The Dirty Dozen as the template for The Suicide Squad, another movie she professed to like.  She also noticed a similarity to the original US version of The Magnificent Seven (which she also liked) but apparently is unfamiliar with their cinematic ur-text, The Seven Samurai.  Movies like these draw on a long tradition of self-sacrificing heroes in popular culture such as the 47 Loyal Ronan of Japan or stories like the Alamo or Custer’s Last Stand in the U.S.**  

There is something dreadfully romantic about a group of desperados willing to throw their lives away facing overwhelming odds to achieve some objective.

Second, language or at least American accents proved a barrier to her.  She repeatedly puzzled over plot points clearly stated in the dialog.  

I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here; many modern audiences apparently don't pay close attention to what characters actually say on screen. 

Finally, she misread the tone of The Dirty Dozen, lured into thinking it would be an action romp by the lengthy team building / training scenes that take up the bulk of the film and serves as the movie's lengthy second act director. 

It's easy to see how she misread the film since Robert Aldrich leavens this part of the movie with a lot of macho humor.*** 

The ending -- the incredibly violent brutal ending with almost all of the Dozen getting killed and the survivors badly injured -- shocked and saddened her quite badly.****  

Again this comes as no surprise if you listen to the dialog.

She did enjoy the film and recognized Charles Bronson from The Magnificent Seven but it took her a while to recognize Lee Martin and when she did it was in contrast to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  She's a big Jimmy Stewart fan so apparently she thought of Marvin only as a villain, unaware of his wide body of work.

I'm glad she liked The Dirty Dozen, too many younger viewers dismiss sight unseen anything made before their birth. 

But I do wonder about what seems to be a modern desire for action without consequences in modern audiences.

© Buzz Dixon

* I stole this parody title from MAD Magazine.  I possess neither shame nor pride.

** In the cases of the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand, boneheaded stupidity led to needless defeats that needed to be covered up by creating pop culture legends glorifying the supposedly great sacrifice made for noble causes.  In both instances, neither the causes nor the defenders were noble, but that didn’t matter to middle class / middle brow / Middle America.

*** “How macho?” you ask.  Except for some prostitute bit parts, there are no females in this movie.  Look at this cast list:  Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Richard Jaeckel, George Kennedy, Trini López, Ralph Meeker (playing a psychiatrist!!!), Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, Robert Webber. Tom Busby, Ben Carruthers, Stuart Cooper, Colin Maitland, Al Mancini, and Robert Phillips.  Any movie with more testosterone on the screen than The Dirty Dozen played only in Pussycat Theaters.

**** Fourteen men go on the mission.  In addition to the dozen convicts, Major Reisman (Marvin) and his platoon sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel) lead the mission.  One of the dozen is killed off camera (a contract dispute when the actor’s agent tried to hold producer Aldrich up for more money ended with that character dying at the beginning of the mission) one goes bonkers and gets killed by a fellow convict, nine of the remaining ten get killed in combat (if I were remaking this John Cassavetes’ character Franco would ironically survive unscathed instead of Bronson’s Wladislaw -- the one of two “good’ convicts -- being badly injured).