Play Dirty Reviews

Not nearly as good as Aldrich's THE DIRTY DOZEN but a fairly entertaining war film nonetheless. Caine plays a novice British Army captain assigned to lead a band of ex-convicts into the African desert to destroy a Nazi oil depot 650 miles behind Rommel's front lines. Of course, the inexperienced captain must earn the respect of his somewhat surly men the hard way--which he eventually does--and the team becomes a crack unit. Unfortunately, the British High Command has also assigned a regular army unit to the same mission, figuring that Caine and his crew will most certainly be killed. (They are just being used as a diversion for Rommel's troops.) Surprisingly, it is the regular troops that are surrounded and slaughtered by Rommel's forces, while Caine's men break through the lines and arrive at their destination. Upon investigation of the site, however, the men are dismayed to learn that the depot is just a decoy. Determined to fulfill their mission, Caine and his troops move on to the real depot. Meanwhile, the British have succeeded in pushing Rommel's forces back and realize that they need the Nazi oil depot open for their own troops. Unable to establish contact with Caine to tell him to abort the mission, the British Command allows the location of Caine's group to be leaked to Nazi spies. That way, they think, Rommel will be informed, and the Nazis will ambush the ragtag band of mercenaries before the depot is destroyed. Despite the odds, Caine succeeds in blowing up the depot by disguising his men in German uniforms. Left with only three men, Caine leads what is left of his troops back to the British, but the four are killed by their own countrymen, who fail to realize that the German uniforms are just a disguise.