- During World War II, a rebellious U.S. Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission of German officers.
- A Major with an attitude problem and a history of getting things done is told to interview military prisoners with death sentences or long terms for a dangerous mission; To parachute behind enemy lines and cause havoc for the German Generals at a rest house on the eve of D-Day.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
- US army Major John Reisman, based in London, is an inventive man who often thinks outside the box which causes many problems in the structured military. But it is because of this mentality that in March 1944, he is assigned, or as his superiors put it volunteers for a near suicide mission. Prior to the Allied forces invading continental Europe, he and his team, who he will train personally with Sergeant Bowren as his second in command, will infiltrate a highly fortified and guarded French château being used by the Nazis as respite house and meeting place primarily for high ranking German officers, kill as many of the officers as possible and take out the communications tower. His squad will consist of twelve of the most heavily sentenced GI convicts, many whose sentence is death. Reisman, who doesn't like the assignment because of the involvement of the convicts, adds one caveat to doing this job: that the convicts have their sentences commuted if they survive. Reisman quickly learns that besides a resentment to authority, the twelve convicts are a disparate group, each with their own button issues and motivations. Reisman not only has to get them to cooperate, but work as a team, which includes having a zero tolerance policy for the group as a whole on issues such as escape attempts while under his command. Even if he can achieve these goals, Reisman also faces the obstacle of Colonel Everett Breed, who is the antithesis of Reisman and who will be at the parachute training base at the same time as Reisman's squad, for which Breed has disdain.—Huggo
- During the World War II, Major Reisman is a tough and efficient military with problems with his superiors. He is assigned by General Worden for an almost impossible top secret suicide mission: to kill as much senior German officers as possible in a retreat on the eve of the D-Day. He must train twelve undisciplined convicted soldiers, most of them sentenced to death, to accomplish the mission. He joins the twelve men under the positive leadership of Joseph Wladislaw and the negative leadership of the insubordinate Victor Franko and tries to form a team with the support of Sergeant Bowren. He makes General Worden to promise to release them all if they are well succeeded. Meanwhile his enemy Colonel Everett Dasher Breed tries to make his life more difficult but Reisman and his twelve men need to prove that they are efficient.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- It is 1944 and the Allied Armies stand ready for a major invasion of Germany from bases in England. As a prelude to D-Day, US Army Intelligence orders a top secret mission where convicted criminals will be offered a pardon in return for parachuting into the Reich on a suicide mission.—Anthony Hughes <husnock31@hotmail.com>
- WWII Army Major Reisman (Lee Marvin) has a history of bucking authority, including that of his former commander Col. Breed (Robert Ryan). Now under the authority of General Worden (Ernest Borgnine), Reisman is asked to lead a commando unit. Their mission: a stealth attack on a posh vacation chateau for Wehrmacht officers in occupied France, in hopes of disrupting German command before an Allied invasion.
It's essentially a suicide mission, and the proposed soldiers are bizarre. After reviewing their qualifications, their crime history, and an interview, twelve military convicts sentenced to death or life prison terms are asked to volunteer in return for full pardons. The convicts include Wladislaw (Charles Bronson), a German-speaking former officer who attacked a superior rather than follow a stupid order, black activist Jefferson (Jim Brown), gangster Franko (John Cassavetes), psychopath Maggott (Telly Savalas), and mentally slow Pinkley (Donald Sutherland).
With the aid of Sergeant Bowren (Richard Jaeckel), the men are taken to a heavily guarded remote camp for training. Nonconformists by nature, Reisman must resort to harsh discipline and incentives to motivate the uncooperative group. When Reisman deprives them of warm water for shaving, Bowren labels them, "the Dirty Dozen". As time passes, they finally begin to learn how to work together as a group.
As a reward, Reisman brings in a group of local hookers for a party for the men, isolating the misogynist Maggott in the guard tower for safety. When Colonel Breed finds out about this breach of regulations, he demands that Reisman's unit "prove themselves". Arrangements are made for them to participate in a local war game. Major Max Armbruster (George Kennedy) is assigned to monitor them, and is impressed by their ingenuity in avoiding capture and "thinking outside the box" in order to achieve their objective.
Training for their mission commences in earnest. Rather than having complex instructions that the men might not remember, Reisman develops a chant for them all to memorize each part of the attack plant. "One: down to the road block, we've just begun; Two: the guards are through; Three: the Major's men are on a spree; Four: Major and Wladislaw go through the door; Five: Pinkley stays out in the drive; Six: the Major gives the rope a fix; Seven: Wladislaw throws the hook to heaven; Eight: Jiménez has got a date; Nine: the other guys go up the line; Ten: Sawyer and Gilpin are in the pen; Eleven: Posey guards points five and seven; Twelve: Wladislaw and the Major go down to delve; Thirteen: Franko goes up without being seen; Fourteen: Zero-hour, Jiménez cuts the cable, Franko cuts the phone; Fifteen: Franko goes in where the others have been; Sixteen: we all come out like it's Halloween." The group recites this constantly to drive it into their minds.
When they parachute into France, Jiminez (Trini López) dies on impact. The plan proceeds as planned ... until a lone woman brings out Maggot's inner demons. He tells her to scream, then stabs her, then starts shooting, alerting the Germans to the attack. Gilpin's (Ben Carruthers) leg gets trapped as the roof gives way, forcing him to sacrifice his life in order to explode the antenna tower. The Germans run to an underground bomb shelter, disrupting the original plan. Reisman and Wladislaw lock the victims inside and pour gasoline in the air vents, and Jefferson throws live grenades in afterwards.
Germans have been picking off the convicts one by one the entire time, and now only four are left. As Franko exclaims that they've made it, he is shot. Reisman, Wladislaw, and Sgt. Bowren escape with their lives.
Back in Allied territory, General Worden decrees that the dead convicts will be listed as soldiers who gave their lives honorably in the line of duty.
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