"The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission" is an American movie from 1988 that was done in co-production with Italy and Yugoslavia and according to IMDb, it is a German-language movie. I doubt that though as looking at the cast, they were definitely speaking English when they made it. Two more years and it will have its 30th anniversary. The director of these slightly over 90 minutes is Lee H. Katzin and he brought a screenplay by three writers to the screen here, to the small screen actually as this one is, like several other "Dirty Dozen" sequels a television release. And with this, I already mentioned the Oscar-winning original that this is based on. It is already the 4th entry to the film series and it came out more than two decades after the first. Taking this into account, it is still pretty solid they have Oscar nominees like Savalas on board and also Borgnine, Oscar winner, who played in these films since the very first.
This is the story of a bunch of American renegade soldiers in charge of going against Germany during the Nazi days. Sadly, the story is really generic and so are most of the characters, even if the actors manage to elevate the forgettable-written material on some occasions. I may be a bit biased as I am not a military movie fan at all, but if the story is good, I certainly appreciate a quality work. This is not one of these, however. And as much as I already praised the performances, some of these are also on the forgettable side. Overall, the film should have been 10 minutes shorter or more as it dragged a bit on some occasions. For the most part, it's soldiers acting like tough guys and making the occasional (sexist) joke in here and towards the end, the focus drifts to battle scenes without heavy tank machinery mostly. It's about the foot soldiers. I personally thought this film was never really funny, touching or dramatically and historically relevant, which is especially disappointing as the writers tried to deliver in all these areas. I am not surprised this was the last film from the franchise not counting the short-lived series. It's not worth checking out unless you really really love the three previous films. Thumbs-down.
This is the story of a bunch of American renegade soldiers in charge of going against Germany during the Nazi days. Sadly, the story is really generic and so are most of the characters, even if the actors manage to elevate the forgettable-written material on some occasions. I may be a bit biased as I am not a military movie fan at all, but if the story is good, I certainly appreciate a quality work. This is not one of these, however. And as much as I already praised the performances, some of these are also on the forgettable side. Overall, the film should have been 10 minutes shorter or more as it dragged a bit on some occasions. For the most part, it's soldiers acting like tough guys and making the occasional (sexist) joke in here and towards the end, the focus drifts to battle scenes without heavy tank machinery mostly. It's about the foot soldiers. I personally thought this film was never really funny, touching or dramatically and historically relevant, which is especially disappointing as the writers tried to deliver in all these areas. I am not surprised this was the last film from the franchise not counting the short-lived series. It's not worth checking out unless you really really love the three previous films. Thumbs-down.