As Kevin Burwick of MovieWeb so rightly states, there’s going to be a bit of pressure when trying to recreate The Dirty Dozen, a movie that has been known to many fans as one of the best war movies ever created, especially since it was based around an actual regiment that was active in WWII. At this time it doesn’t sound a though the movie has moved past the earliest stages of development, but it’s believed that it will be able to stand up to the original once it’s all said and done, which is a bold claim to be certain but something that could be well-founded since the story itself is widely known to many people and the ability of those working on the project, namely Simon Kinberg who is producing and David Ayer who is writing and directing. With these two taking the lead it’s believed that this project can manage itself into the kind of position that will put it squarely in the public eye and possibly as one of the best remakes around. Again it’s a bold claim, but it’s one that a lot of people are hoping will come true once all is said and done.
The original movie was, as many know, about a group of Army prisoners that were trained and sent on what was supposed to be a suicide mission, with the condition that if they survived they would be pardoned for service to their country. Of course as you can imagine only a small number made it out since the difficulty of the mission was designed to make sure that it was a one-way trip for many of them. This definitely sounds like something that might offend someone due to its ‘lack of humanity’ but in many ways it also sounds like a great solution to those that have erred in life and are in need of a way to make restitution for what they’ve done. Think about it, sending in prisoners that are highly trained or at least skilled enough to take on the most dangerous jobs as a way of showing their dedication to their country yet again. There’s no way that a lot of people would ever go for it since it does sound like something only the most callous person in the world would do, but it still makes a certain kind of sense.
Remaking this movie however is bound to elicit a few criticisms that might come along during or before the release since remakes and reboots have a sketchy track record thus far in Hollywood. It’s easy to see how a movie like The Dirty Dozen has inspired a lot of pop culture and given way to a great number of movies that have similar themes such as the Suicide Squad movie, which could be argued as being an updated and glammed up version, but it’s also simple to see how the idea has been taken and used in many different ways so as to draw inspiration from it if not the same story idea and material. As of now it sounds like the coming movie is going to be updated instead of keeping it back in the WWII time frame, which is another trick that’s been tried before but has also backfired as much as it’s worked. The hope of course is that this time around things will fall in place as they need to in order to create something that fans will enjoy and older fans will see as an improvement or at least a clever look that was derived from the original. Whether the movie is going to copy the original as exactly as it can while maintaining the obvious differences is hard to predict it’s still enough to think that there will be a few throwbacks here and there that might pay homage to the first movie and therefore validate the existence of the current project. After all it’s just polite to give a shout-out to the movies that came before as a way to say ‘thank you’ for making the current landscape in show business possible.
With that said it’s easy to sit back and sigh as yet another remake attempts to roll out and continue an ongoing legacy that is unfortunately being based on the lack of any real creative thought that is being put into the movies these days since watching one movie after another that’s being brought back from the dusty old archives to be attempted once more with new actors and in some cases even new twists and turns is becoming kind of tiresome. The successes of some movies and the roles of some actors make a lot of them bearable, but the idea that people are willing to pay to see an idea that’s been rolled out before just because a new face is filling the role is hard to believe. But that’s how it goes, and that’s what we’ve come to accept.
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