They are convicts, psychos, lunkheads, losers - and champs at the box office and in movie lore. Decades after it burst onto the scene, The Dirty Dozen remains a milestone among ensemble action flicks. Lee Marvin portrays a tough-as-nails major volunteered in the Army way to command a squad of misfits on a suicide mission against Nazi brass. Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Trini Lopez, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and Clint Walker are among the 12 jailbirds who will earn their freedom if they survive. And Robert Aldrich (The Longest Yard) directs, blending anti-authority gibes with explosive excitement. Nominated for four Academy Awards, The Dirty Dozen won for Best Sound Effects.

Synopsis

A group of conscripted convicts, most already destined for death row, are drafted to go on a near-suicide mission with the understanding that if the Nazis don't kill them, the U.S. Army won't, either. In the hands of hard boiled director Robert Aldrich and a tough as leather cast headed by Lee Marvin (as a troublesome U.S. Army major), that's all the plot that's needed to make one rip-roaring World War II action flick. Marvin's mission is two fold first turn his dozen prisoners into a fighting unit and then turn them loose on a French chteau occupied by partying German officers.