Wonderful Movie

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The acting in this movie is really good.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Part II picks up a few months after the first(despite coming out 18 years later!) which has Lee Marvin returning as Major Reisman(older looking but still game) along with Ernest Borgnine and Richard Jaekel in their original roles. Reisman must once again recruit 12 condemned military prisoners, only this time, the group seems even less trustworthy than the first...Belated TV sequel tries to provide a seamless transition from the first film, and almost succeeds, but plot is uninspired, even silly(stop the assassination of Hitler? Unlikely in late World War II, but OK...) Works as well as it does by the good cast(Lee Marvin is still appealing, as are Borgnine and Jaeckel). Not bad at all, but hardly necessary! Still, there would be two more TV sequels, then a series.(Which I haven't seen).

1944: Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) is in trouble again. Whilst out on a mission, he ordered his men to hijack a truck full of steaks and scotch that was on its way to a banquet for top Nazi officers. Facing years of hard labour in a military prison and dismissal from service, Reisman is reprieved by General Worden (Ernest Borgnine) to form another Dirty Dozen (made up of military prisoners on death row or facing long term imprisonment) to undertake another suicide mission. This time they must sneak into occupied France and hijack a train in order to assassinate a Nazi general because he is planning to kill Hitler.Nearly twenty years after the release of Robert Aldrich's classic war movie, THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967), came this preposterous made for TV sequel in which the plot bares no credibility what so ever. There's a ridiculous climatic sequence where Reisman and his men come within yards of Hitler himself and the Major has to persuade his man to shoot the general and not Hitler as he's tempted to do just that. In reality of course, they wouldn't have got within fifty yards of him and there is no suspense to be had here as we know that they wouldn't have shot Hitler anyway as this would have made the tale even more absurd than it already is. On the positive side, Lee Marvin is still fun to watch as the tough Major Reisman and he is reunited with Richard Jaeckal as Sgt Bowren and Ernest Borgnine as General Wordon who still offer good performances and there's some slick action sequences to enjoy before the absurd climatic showdown.Nevertheless, it was still unwise to have made this film but two sequels followed. They were: THE DIRTY DOZEN: THE DEADLY MISSION (1987) and THE DIRTY DOZEN: THE FATAL MISSION (1988), which brought back Telly Savalas whose character was killed off in the original, but this time he was back as the man training the men as one Major Wright.

According to an article written many years ago, the original "The Dirty Dozen" novel was actually based on real life story. US military convicts were offered pardon in exchange for similar suicide missions in Nazi occupied France. They agreed, but after the drop they turned their tails and spent the rest of the war in neutral Spain. In real life, use of pardoned convicts as soldiers is rather common phenomena, as experiences in former Yugoslavia indicate. In WWII Red Army and Wehrmacht employed such practice. The operation that actually resembles this movie the most was conducted by Germans. In May of 1944, frustrated with unsuccessful attempts to chase down and destroy the core formations of Yugoslav Partisans, German High Command planned the daring parachute raid on the headquarters of Partisan leader Tito and trained entire battalion of convicts for that very purpose. At the end of the day, Tito, although initially surprised, managed to get away and the convict paratroopers, decimated in a hellatious battle, took only Tito's freshly tailored Field Marshall uniform as their only trophy.

This movie had all the warning signs of a horribly cheesy comical re-make. Based upon "The Dirty Dozen," this almost unbearable 90 minutes of film made me almost rethink such masterpieces as Conspiracy Theory, The Blair Witch Project, and Batman and Robin. The movie itself was a mix between the worst Naked Gun humor, and a mildly serious Police Academy 7. Since it was also a "made-for-TV" movie, and since it was also a "made-for-TV" movie comedy, it is among the very cheesiest of the cheesy. So be warned, and watch out for Sonny Landham who played Billy in Predator.Particular attention should be payed to the German scene, which was one of the cheesy-funny scenes in the movie. But as a rule, avoid most movies with "The Next Mission" in the title, or comedies made for TV.Hopefully this was the Dirty Dozen's last mission, or rather the "Baker's Dozen's" last mission!