Play Dirty

U.K. | 1968 Directed by André De Toth Starring Michael Caine Nigel Davenport Nigel Green Color | 117 Minutes | PG Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) MGM Home Entertainment

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		Review by Brian Lindsey

7     5   10 = Highest Rating

British cinema has produced its share of antiwar films over the years, inspired not by any Vietnam-like defeat but rather the bitter, costly victories of the two world wars — the slaughter of an entire generation, to little practical gain, in the first; the loss of global empire after the second. Nonetheless I was taken aback by the utterly nihilistic cynicism of 1968's Play Dirty. Much of this reaction had to do with the film's setting. The North African theater of World War II was perhaps the most chivalrous battlefield in the history of modern war, with the fewest recorded atrocities. A major reason for this was the relative dearth of civilians caught in the crossfire. Another was the mutual respect the combatants held for one another. The Germans and British viewed each other as skilled, honorable opponents, and while neither thought much of the Italians' martial abilities they still looked upon them as fellow human beings. Under incredibly harsh conditions, all sides did what they could to honor the Geneva Conventions and internationally accepted rules of war. Of course commando missions, by their very nature, don't lend themselves to such rules. Even so, judging from the various histories and memoirs I've read over the years, both Allied and Axis troops in North Africa demonstrated generally high standards of behavior in the course of such 'special ops'.     The commandos of Play Dirty have no standards whatsoever, nor any real loyalties — not even to each other. They are criminals, commanded by a crackpot.     The film is sometimes dismissed as a British rip-off of The Dirty Dozen (1967). This is likely due to the brief plot summaries found in reference book capsule reviews and television guides. As in Robert Aldrich's classic war adventure, the commandos in Play Dirty are criminals given a choice between prison and combat duty. But there the similarities end. Unlike Dozen, the men are not shown being recruited and trained for a specific mission — they're already members of a specialized irregular force, deployed in the field. Their leader, Colonel Masters (Nigel Green, Corridors of Blood), is an eccentric oddball much more interested in ancient military history than the present conflict. His bean-counting superior, Brigadier Blore (Harry Andrews), isn't happy with their record — Masters' unit has achieved exactly nothing of substance to date — and orders it disbanded. Masters is able to secure one last chance to redeem his force when he produces photos, taken by Bedouin spies, of a secret German fuel depot 400 miles behind enemy lines. If his men destroy this depot then Masters can retain his command and go on testing his unorthodox theories of desert warfare. Blore imposes one condition on the raid, however. It must be led by a proper English officer, preferably one with some experience of petrol installations. And said officer should, if at all possible, come back alive.     A suitable (i.e., "spare") candidate is found in Captain Douglas (Michael Caine) of the Royal Engineers. An employee of British Petroleum before the war, his current duty consists of supervising the offloading/storage of gasoline at Allied ports, making him in one sense the ideal choice. He's not a combat soldier, though, having so far spent his service in the rear with the gear. But orders are orders. The young captain is less than impressed when introduced to Col. Masters and his motley, undisciplined crew.     Seven men will accompany Douglas on the raid. One, second-in-command Leech (Nigel Davenport), is an Irishman; the rest are either Arabs or Mediterranean types. All were originally plucked from jail by Masters for offenses such as drug smuggling, thievery and murder. (Leech is a disgraced merchant marine skipper who scuttled his ship for the insurance money but got caught.) The taciturn, hard-nosed Leech is immediately disdainful of Douglas, refusing to go on the mission if the by-the-book engineer is in charge, but Masters promises him a £2,000 cash bonus if he brings Douglas back in one piece. Disguised in Italian uniforms, the squad heads out into the desert in a small column of vehicles.     Douglas and Leech, who share nothing in common with one another except mutual distrust and loathing, must somehow find a way to work together if the raid is to succeed. They have no idea that the staff officers at Blore's HQ hold them — and their mission — in even lower contempt. Unbeknownst to Masters, Blore dispatches a second, stronger force of regular army troops on the same task, a day's travel behind Douglas' team. The commandos are to run 'interference' for this second force, bearing the brunt of any trouble Rommel's boys may throw in their path...     Play Dirty takes a more realistic approach to war, uncommon in its contemporaries and not truly fashionable until after the Vietnam conflict had run its course. There is no glory or heroism in anything the commandos do. They are not motivated in the slightest by any sense of patriotism, duty, or sacrifice. Their superior officers are portrayed as self-serving, backstabbing opportunists. All of the commandos are unlikable scumbags, so the audience can't really root for them as the 'good guys'. They machinegun unarmed medics and loot the dead (including the corpses of Allied soldiers); three of them even try to rape a captured German nurse. Leech isn't a total barbarian but he's an utterly mercenary personality, the type who'd shoot his own mother in the kneecaps if there was something to be gained by it. This leaves Capt. Douglas as the only potentially sympathetic character, but here the film throws a bit of a curveball. As underplayed by Caine, Douglas is an aloof, distant chap who tries to pretend he's morally superior even as he starts playing the 'game' of war with the same ruthlessness as the criminals he's leading. He remains something of an enigma throughout, purposefully denying the film a stable moral center.     Hungarian-born director André De Toth, helmer of American westerns and Italian costume adventures but best known for House of Wax (1953), brings a surprisingly modernistic look to the subject — the movie plays like a picture made 10 or even 30 years later. (Two of the commandos are openly gay, often seen holding hands and embracing, about which the other guys in the squad could give a damn. The perpetually-grinning ex-dope smuggler of the group is shown smoking a joint.) Action scenes, sparse and sparely-mounted, are treated realistically; nobody does anything cool or heroic in the heat of battle and death is depicted in purely ugly, wasteful terms. The deserts of Spain are superbly substituted for the rocky sands of Egypt and Libya via the evocative photography of Ted Scaife (Khartoum); if stretches of the movie play like an extended episode of Rat Patrol that's because it was shot in many of the same locations as that '60s TV show (and sort of covers the same subject, it must be said). Caine and Davenport make for compelling adversaries who gradually develop a grudging respect for each other, a respect that — despite all they go through together — can never include trust.

Bargain priced, MGM's bareboned release of Play Dirty offers a sharp, spotless transfer of the film, presented in its original AR of 2.35:1 — despite a misprint on the packaging which says it's 1.85 — and 16x9 enhanced. Four audio options are available: the original English mono, English stereo, and also French and Spanish mono tracks. 4/28/07

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