By Lee Pfeiffer
With a tidal wave of DVD releases hitting the market every year, it may well be that you are unaware that some of your favorite films are available on home video. In Cinema Retro's never-ending quest to serve our loyal readers, we occasionally shine the spotlight on DVD releases that don't get much fanfare and are often overlooked. In this case, we focus on Play Dirty, a 1968 WWII film that boasts a sterling cast of great British actors: Michael Caine, the two Nigels (Davenport and Green in a rare pairing in the same film) and Harry Andrews. The movie was directed by Andre De Toth, another of those rather eccentric, larger-than-life characters sadly lacking in today's film industry. The plot finds Caine as a British officer supervising loading docks in WWII Africa. He's reluctantly sent on a top secret mission 400 miles behind enemy lines to blow up a fuel depot. Unbeknownst to Caine, his team is being used as sacrificial lambs to divert attention from the real commando team that is following in their footsteps. From minute one, the uppercrust Caine finds himself in charge of a motley crew that makes the Dirty Dozen look like a boy's choir. He locks horns with Nigel Davenport, a mercenary-like cynic who makes it clear he is the de facto leader of the team. After suffering embarrassing lapses in strategy, Caine has to prove his worth in order to re-establish respect for his command. Along the way there are other challenges, aside from the obviously suicidal nature of the mission. The pure hell of the desert has rarely been so convincingly captured in any film and the widescreen cinematography by Edward Scaife is a wonder to behold. You can practically feel the heat and the sand every throughout the film, and you are made aware of how difficult the shooting of this film must have been for the actors. (The movie was shot in Almeria, Spain where Sergio Leone filmed his Dollar film trilogy with Clint Eastwood).
The plot takes some surprising twists, with double-crosses, unexpected plot devices and the simmering tensions between Caine and Davenport that provide an unpredictable quality to the film that separates it from most WWII films. The movie's cynical outlook on war and the people who find themselves fighting them was largely a reflection with public weariness over the Vietnam conflict, which was then at its peak, along with the resulting protest movement. Performances are first-rate and the violence would have made Sam Peckinpah proud. This is not a film that stints on realism and the graphic nature of some scenes would have been impossible to bring to the screen only a year or two before
Play Dirty was released. The real treat is watching the array of first-rate actors at their peak (even if Green and Andrews are relegated to extended cameo sequences). Ironically, Caine had appeared almost simultaneously in another major anti-war film that was reknowned for its violent content, Robert Aldrich's
Too Late the Hero. Play Dirty was the fourth collaboration between Michael Caine and James Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman, with whom he made the three Harry Palmer big screen spy thrillers. It ranks as a top-notch adventure, but keep an ice cold brew handy when viewing it - the sun drenched landscapes will make you thirsty from the first frame.
MGM's DVD provides a superb looking picture, but the one frustrating drawback is that the disc has no extras whatsoever.
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