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PLAY DIRTY (1969)
Label: MGM
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 118 Minutes 13 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: Andre De Toth
Cast: Michael Caine, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green, Harry Andrews, Aly Ben Ayed, Vivian Pickles, Mohsen Ben Abdallah, Enrique Avila, Takis Emmanouel, Mohamed Kouka, Scott Miller, Patrick Jordan, Bernard Archard, Daniel Pilon, Jeremy Child, Dennis Brennan, Michael Stevens, Bridget Espeet, Tony Stamboulieh, Stanley Caine, Martin Buirland, George McKeenan, Rafael Albaicin, Jose Halufi
Set in South Africa during WWII director Andre De Toth's Play Dirty (1969) stars Michael Caine (The Ipcress File) as British officer Captain Douglas who, because of his fuel line expertise is recruited by British Army Colonel Masters (Nigel Green, The Skull) and Brigadier General Blore (Harry Andrews, Watership Down) to lead a troop of former convicts on a sure-fire suicide mission to cross the rugged Sahara Desert and destroy a strategic Nazi oil reserve. Among the motley lot he is tasked with leading are the enigmatic Captain Cyril Leech (Nigel Davenport, Phase IV) a former sailor who sank his boat to get a payout from for the insurance money but neglected to tell his crew who perished; bomber cop-killer turned demolition expert Sadok (Aly Ben Ayed); smuggler turned armorer Kostos Manov (Takis Emmanouel), cold-blooded murderer Boudesh (Scott Miller, Red Sun), and a pair of local corpse-robbing gay potheads guides Hassan (Mohsen Ben Abdallah) and Assine (Mohamed Kouka). It's established early on that Leech has a habit of returning from missions with dead Brit officers in tow, so much so that Col. Masters feels the need to offer him a large reward is he brings him back alive.
Things start going wrong from the get-go as the troop head into the desert in military vehicle disguised as an Italian patrol with Captain's Douglass and Leech butting heads on navigation and having to massacre a group of shady local tribal people when Douglass ident as a British soldier is betrayed. Later they are waylaid when facing an steep mountain terrain that the vehicle cannot scale, but Douglass Fitzcarraldo's it with an fairly ingenious winch system, but even that ends in disaster, destroying their only radio, and further fuels the disparity between Douglas and the troop of military miscreants who are already increasingly insubordinate towards his leadership.
Soon after a German armored-track troop is spied nearby and ambush and destroy an Army troop, who unbeknownst to Douglas and Leech have been sent 2-days after them, at which point they realize that they themselves were unwittingly sent as the decoys, further raising tensions. Arriving at the fuel depot during a blinding sandstorm they storm it only to discover it's a false front, the intel was bad, but Douglas is determined to travel to a port city and blow-up the real fuel depot, the men are reluctant to do so, scoffing at the idea, until Leech turns them around on the idea.
With no communications with HQ the men don German disguises and infiltrate the German occupied porty city to blow up the strategic fuel depot, unaware that their superiors are secretly working against them for their own grand schemes, having informed on them to a double-agent, leading up to an explosive and quite cynical finale that caught me off guard. I've always heard of this is a bit of a poor man's Dirty Dozen, and I can see that, sure, but it holds up on it's own with a pretty terrific main cast and some colorful supporting characters,
I thought this slow-burn war thriller was quiet a gem, the arid locations and hostile interplay between Caine's Douglass and Davenport's Leech is quite wonderful, downplayed but very pointed; there's the general unease that Leech might be a double agent of some sort, thus explaining why most of the officers he's charged with transporting come back dead, but it's left ambiguous and never resolves. Less ambiguous is the criminal nature of the men they lead, at one point one of the guides is blown-up by a landmine while stealing watches off corpses at a booby-trapped oasis, they steal a German ambulance to treat his wounds and inadvertently kidnap a German nurse (Vivian Pickles, Harold and Maude), who proves to be more a testicle-kicking handful than expected, and forced to tend to the injured guide's wounds. When she's done suturing him up the men attempt to rape the feisty woman in the desert before being interrupted. I loved how gritty, uneasy and non-heroic it was, a bitter film about what a nasty thing war and it's machinations are, a definite recommend from me.
Audio/Video: Play Dirty (1969) arrives on Blu-ray from MGM in 1080p HD widescreen (2.35:1), the image is gritty and organic, grain is present and managed decently, the source shows vertical lines, white speckling, nicks and scratches throughout, not sure what the source here is but it looks pleasing, just not restored to pristine condition. The colors are earthy and convey the grittiness of the rocky environs, and skin tones looks properly sunbaked, with goody contrast and modest depth and clarity. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2,0 mono with optional English subtitles. Dialogue is clean and well-rendered, some of the Michel Legrand score was pretty pumped-up in the mix, it draws attention to itself, but never having watched this one before I am unsure if this is a choice that was made or an odd quirk of the mixing.
This is a completely barebones release, the static menu only offers the option to play, there's not even an trailer for the film. The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the same key artwork as the previous DVD release.
Special Features:
- None
Screenshots from the MGM Blu-ray:
This release is available from www.MovieZyng.com
