War Classics: Dirty Dozen, Bridge Too Far, Battle of Britain

Achieved Reviews
January, 2007

The Dirty Dozen
Aldrich, 1967



When it came out The Dirty Dozen was a smashing success, breaking all time studio records and becoming an instant classic. It consists of the rather daring story of twelve death row convicts who are saved from the noose on the condition that they go on what could very well be a suicide mission in preparation for D-Day. I read one review which related the film’s narrative to a football season, which is very much true. It starts off with recruiting, moves to training, then on to the pregame and of course there is the real deal, the actual game against the two bitter rivals. This is basically how The Dirty Dozen unfolds.

Unfortunately, it takes a drastically long time to do so, the runtime being something like two and a half hours. The movie simply takes too long to accomplish anything. There are massive stretches of the movie concerned with quite boring scenes, such as the “war games” where the dirty dozen attempt to prove they are ready for battle. It should have been a short scene, but it turned into a puzzlingly long and drawn out ordeal. The movie was fun at times, though, with some funny scenes and some humorous characters, some even memorable – but unfortunately because they are a bunch of murdering thugs we never really do grow attached to them.

In fact, it seemed to me there was almost no attempt to even make us feel any empathy for them, and as a result we really are quite unmoved when the characters start getting killed in battle. I wish I at least felt like routing for them more, but I just didn’t feel at all compelled to do so. I guess it didn’t help that even after 2 hours of working up to the final mission, the final mission still turned out to be disappointing. It most consisted of killing unarmed officers and their women with grenades and then shooting at a line of German reinforcements. It wasn’t really that exciting for what was intended to be a huge payoff at the end.

But in the end it wasn’t a complete waste of time either. Even though most of my review has been complaints, and while I was disappointed with it, it still had lots of fun moments. The characters were undeveloped (though they were entertaining), the movie was way too long, and the action didn’t really deliver, but on some level, I still felt somewhat entertained. I wouldn’t really recommend the movie, especially if you don’t like war films in the first place, but if you happened to be bored one day and it was on TV, it wouldn’t hurt to turn it on and decide for yourself.



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A Bridge Too Far
Attenborough, 1977



A Bridge Too Far focuses on the failed ‘Operation Market Garden’ during World War II, in which the allies attempted to parachute thousands of soldiers into Belgium followed by tanks from France in order to open a route straight into the heart of industrial German, thus ending the war by Christmas. It didn’t work. A Bridge Too Far follows this story from both the perspective that the commanders had as well as what it was like for the men on the ground, and does a very good job at doing both.

We get a very good sense of what the plan was as well as why Market Garden turned out to be a failure. The movie also does a great job showcasing the intense battles for the key bridges as well as the arduous push down the narrows roads that were to become known as “Hell’s Highway”. The battle sequences look authentic and are chaotic, although are a little dated do to the fact that Saving Private Ryan has made us look differently at war sequences. The all star cast is, indeed, all star. Some people see this as a plus, others as a negative. I didn’t feel either way about it, but was simply content that all the huge actors turned in good performances and that none of them had their personalities overshadow their roles. Despite the length the movie is still very well paced and it never really lets up.

All in all, A Bridge Too Far might not be considered one of the best World War II movies out there, but I certainly thought it did a great job at accurately and entertainingly portraying the failure at Market Garden from both a tactical and soldier’s point of view. The battles are very well done, very intense and the movie is never a bore. Despite all the huge stars there is really no stand out performances, and the movie is a bit dated now that it is thirty years old, but overall it’s one of the better World War II movies out there, and is most importantly enjoyable to watch.



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Battle of Britain
Hamilton, 1969



Battle of Britain is a movie showcasing the win or die battle in the skies over London during World War II, where a handful of R.A.F. and Commonwealth pilots fought off thousands of Luftwaffe aircraft which were attempting to clear the way for an invasion of Britain. If the Germans had been successful, they would have added years onto the war, or worse. Battle of Britain therefore mainly focuses on dogfights and aerial battles as well as demonstrating how close Britain came to loosing.

In the department of aerial combat, Battle of Britain can be considered a cinema classic. Where other movies of the era, like Midway which came a decade after this film, had horrible stock footage or cheesy effects to show aerial combat; Battle of Britain had the real thing. All the dogfights look very real because they are real. Those are real Spitfires and 109s flying around, as the director was able to gather them from private collectors and even leased a squadron of bombers from Spain. The result is a series of fantastically shot dogfights and aerial combat scenes where sometimes dozens of planes are zipping around the sky. It’s really breathtaking stuff, and not even CGI could do any better. My favorite scene was a brilliant aerial sequence where the sound was muted and it instead plays to a violent crescendo of orchestra music which magnifies the intensity and emotion of everything. It’s easily the best scene of the movie and I would even say it’s one of my favorite aerial combat scenes of all time. The downside is there are a few optical effects to fake explosions which unfortunately look fake themselves, and other effects like showing London on fire look a bit fake too. But this is forgivable because the actual dogfights themselves otherwise look fantastic.

Unfortunately, the plot and the characters are generally paper thin. There are so many characters that there is almost no character development, and the pilot characters are indistinguishable in the dogfights because their faces are covered. When a plane goes up and a guy is screaming, it’s hard to tell who died even if he is a main character. There is a painfully thin romance plot that is clearly tacked on, as well. Another complain would be that they portrayed Herman Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, as being a fat idiot who didn’t know what he was doing and no one liked. In reality he wasn’t an idiot, he was simply more concerned with his wealth than fighting, and he wasn’t hated – he was probably the most beloved Nazi figurehead in the first years of the war.

However, what makes Battle of Britain shine is the dogfights, and that’s all you should expect from this movie. Even though everything else is pretty thin, and the movie would have been disasterous without the authentic dogfights, I still really enjoyed it. Because of the extraordinary aerial sequences over Britain, all else is forgivable, or even irrelevant. You are simply entranced by shiny and authentic World War II warbirds to care about anything else.