Rent Play Dirty (1968)

A dirty little war - Play Dirty review by Count Otto Black

In the wake of "The Dirty Dozen", it occurred to Hollywood that if your bad guys are actual Nazis, your heroes can be literally anybody else whatsoever except possibly demons from Hell and still be fairly heroic by comparison. This film tries to combine that idea with the basic plot of "Lawrence Of Arabia" - a small group of maverick Allied soldiers must cross a huge expanse of North African desert in order to accomplish an almost impossible military objective.

Unfortunately it doesn't do it at all well. Under-characterized people with occasionally baffling motivations do predictable things. It's no spoiler to reveal that, if three trucks have to be ever so slowly and perilously winched up a cliff (huge nod to "The Wages Of Fear" there!), the third one won't make it, otherwise why bother with that scene? But the extent to which certain characters are doomed from the get-go is just plain laughable. One utterly irrelevant yet quite prominent character is literally in the movie purely in order to be pointlessly killed for no reason at all, thus demonstrating the futility of war. Or something.

Even worse, our heroes don't really do all that much fighting. The Nazis are sensible enough to be largely absent from the desert, and while a director like David Lean could do something interesting with that situation, we're in lesser hands here. People who don't like each other bicker, and once in a while they get to be even nastier to whoever else they happen to bump into. There is literally nobody in this film whose survival you particularly care about, and for a war film, there isn't a great deal of war. Full marks for explaining, in case you didn't already know, that war isn't usually a good idea, but zero for making any aspect of it look interesting, even in a bad way. And why is Nigel Green third-billed? He's barely in the movie, unlike a lot of people you'll see nowhere else because they can't act. Stodgy doom-laden tedium. Even Michael Caine doesn't seem to be engaged to his usual extent. Avoid.

Play Dirty - Play Dirty review by OL

Based around the exploits of the Long Range Desert Group and Popskis Private Army who used similar tactics against Rommel in WW2. Nigel Green as David Stirling, Stirling actually got involved in the fighting....

Very entertaining, tense, classic WWII North-Africa set war movie - Play Dirty review by PV

This film would seem to have been made in the wake of the success of The Dirty Dozen. It is no worse for that, but not as memorable.

I think I saw it many MANY years ago as a child - vague memories of the two gay Arabs and the ending. The two Arabs are genuinely groundbreaking but realistic - despite its supposed illegality, homosexual relationships in homosocial societies are not unusual. Watch THE KITE RUNNER. Trainee Jihadi suicide bombers are expected to keep their older trainers warm at night in the isis tents...

I really enjoyed this. It has some brilliant fighting moments, realistic explosions and gunfire. I loved the scenes with mines and boobytraps.

I see Melvyn Bragg cowrote the screenplay, though based on another man's idea based on a true story of a WWII Commando unit in north Africa, so frankly any half-decent writer could so that easily. Bragg must have been very well connected, not the urchin he claims to have been. I'd be interested to hear his views about how the German nurse is treated here.

Michael Caine is great here aged 39. The South African commando charged with protecting him is played by Nigel Green, who died in 1972 aged 47 from a probable suicide, sleeping pill overdose. His athletic build meant he played many military roles and Hercules in Jason and the Argonauts.

4 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it.