The Dirty Dozen

*Two days ago I saw the movie The Dirty Dozen. These types of films have tried to celebrate the heroic actions of certain individuals or the collective actions of war, especially for propaganda purposes. This type of film was closely related to the American participation in World War II at the height of the 1940s, and for the next ten years, they focused on telling their great victories. However, in the 1960s, when…

If you had to choose a handful of military films to show a young audience what the past was like, *The Dirty Dozen*, would have to be on the list. It's one of those movies that made it to the Christmas time rerun lineups on that thing we used to watch all day, the TV. A lot of actors were WWII veterans back in the day. It's not that common today. Adam Driver is the only modern actor that comes to mind thinking of ve…

Today, most people would hardly rush to associate war with anything noble or chivalrous, and even splendid little wars, won without a single casualty, leave a bitter taste in the mouth. But some thirty years ago it wasn't so; movie audiences, with their war experiences shaped by the global and relatively clear-cut Good vs. Evil conflict like WW2, didn't see anything wrong with war, as long as their 'good' side was w…

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…