PLAY DIRTY is a straightforward no-nonsense war flick that played on a passing resemblance to Robert Aldrich's DIRTY DOZEN to get itself noticed but which never really received the attention it probably deserved. It's surprisingly cynical for a British war movie of the era, and its depiction of army brass as scheming glory-seekers perhaps signifies a point in time when the cinema began to grow up. Veteran director Andre de Toth, making his first film in five years, creates an appropriately tense and heated atmosphere, but offers little in the way of characterisation.
Michael Caine plays Captain Douglas, an army captain ordered against his will to lead a bunch of ex-convicts on a mission to destroy one of Rommel's fuel depots situated deep in the African desert. The men he leads are a ragtag band of cutthroats, murderers, thieves, junkies and homosexuals (whose sexual orientation was at the time obviously still considered akin to more anti-social practices), all loyal to prickly desert veteran Captain Leech (Nigel Davenport) who joins the mission only after being offered £2,000 if he manages to keep Douglas alive. Tension within the group is intensified by encounters with German patrols and natives loyal to the enemy.
While there are obvious similarities between this film and THE DIRTY DOZEN, they are mostly superficial; the rogues and scallywags in this film are only really there to make up the numbers and probably share no more than half-a-dozen lines between them. Instead, the film focuses on the mutual antipathy between Douglas and Leech who, although representing opposing elements of the forces' hierarchy, realise too late that they should be working together and that the real enemy isn't always who you expect them to be. The friction between the two men is nicely edgy without ever boiling over; instead of being at each other's throat, they prefer to score points of one another, a technique which emphasises the futility of their antagonism. Leech softens a little as Douglas hardens, but the thaw between them is never entirely completed. While this keeps the situation moving, we tend to receive a rather one-sided picture of both men, and learn very little about them.
De Toth makes nice use of the Spanish desert, and the film retains a pleasingly contemporary look it's easy to believe it was made in the last ten years at times. It's surprisingly graphic and hard-edged for its time, but while the film isn't exactly padded out with superfluous scenes, many sequences are longer than they need to be, with a subsequent dilution of suspense that means it feels longer than it actually is. The twist ending doesn't really work for me, and I can't help feeling the message would have been stronger had the unit following them been allowed to survive in order to shoot down Caine and gang at the mock fuel depot in the mistaken belief that they are Germans.
Michael Caine plays Captain Douglas, an army captain ordered against his will to lead a bunch of ex-convicts on a mission to destroy one of Rommel's fuel depots situated deep in the African desert. The men he leads are a ragtag band of cutthroats, murderers, thieves, junkies and homosexuals (whose sexual orientation was at the time obviously still considered akin to more anti-social practices), all loyal to prickly desert veteran Captain Leech (Nigel Davenport) who joins the mission only after being offered £2,000 if he manages to keep Douglas alive. Tension within the group is intensified by encounters with German patrols and natives loyal to the enemy.
While there are obvious similarities between this film and THE DIRTY DOZEN, they are mostly superficial; the rogues and scallywags in this film are only really there to make up the numbers and probably share no more than half-a-dozen lines between them. Instead, the film focuses on the mutual antipathy between Douglas and Leech who, although representing opposing elements of the forces' hierarchy, realise too late that they should be working together and that the real enemy isn't always who you expect them to be. The friction between the two men is nicely edgy without ever boiling over; instead of being at each other's throat, they prefer to score points of one another, a technique which emphasises the futility of their antagonism. Leech softens a little as Douglas hardens, but the thaw between them is never entirely completed. While this keeps the situation moving, we tend to receive a rather one-sided picture of both men, and learn very little about them.
De Toth makes nice use of the Spanish desert, and the film retains a pleasingly contemporary look it's easy to believe it was made in the last ten years at times. It's surprisingly graphic and hard-edged for its time, but while the film isn't exactly padded out with superfluous scenes, many sequences are longer than they need to be, with a subsequent dilution of suspense that means it feels longer than it actually is. The twist ending doesn't really work for me, and I can't help feeling the message would have been stronger had the unit following them been allowed to survive in order to shoot down Caine and gang at the mock fuel depot in the mistaken belief that they are Germans.