With
Father’s Day looming just around the corner, one of the classic roles
of tough-guy favorite Lee Marvin gets a superlative special edition DVD
release from Warner Bros. Often imitated but rarely convincingly
duplicated, 1967’s The Dirty Dozen is an indisputable action genre gem.

Marvin
stars as John Reisman, a sturdy, square-jawed and cynical Army Major
assigned by General Warden (Ernest Borgnine) to train and command a
squad of 12 hardened convict misfits on a suicide mission against top,
on-leave Nazi brass on the eve of D-Day in occupied France. Among the
jailbirds who will earn their freedom, if they survive, are Telly
Savalas, Jim Brown, Charles Bronson, Trini Lopez, Donald Sutherland,
Clint Walker and John Cassavetes, the latter an Oscar nominee for Best
Supporting Actor for his work in the film. Neatly divided between its
introduction of the men, their training and fitful regimentation, their
participation in a series of war games and the final raid itself, The Dirty Dozen is naturally clichéd in some instances, but tugged along capably by the personalities on display.

What additionally helps separate The Dirty Dozen from its genre brethren is its script, by Nunnally Johnson and Lukas Heller, and Flight of the Phoenix and The Longest Yard
director Robert Aldrich’s unflinching, sleeves-rolled-up orchestration
of the gritty material (the film takes its name from an incident
wherein the prisoners-turned-soldiers refuse the indignity of cold
water, only to then be told that they won’t shave or shower from there
on). For both fans of war drama and ensemble action flicks, it doesn’t
get much better than The Dirty Dozen.

Spread out over two discs and housed in a regular Amray case with a snap tray insert, this special-edition release of The Dirty Dozen
is presented in a 1.77 anamorphic transfer with a re-mastered Dolby
digital 5.1 audio track that makes superlative use of its front-channel
stereo spread. Interestingly, three made-for-television sequels to the
movie followed two decades later, in the 1980s, and the first of those,
1985’s The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission is also included here.
(The other two are being re-released as a double-feature DVD this month
by Sony.) A four-minute introduction to the film by Borgnine kicks off
the release, and he fondly and candidly touches on the movie’s English
location filming and the fact that Marvin’s role was originally offered
to John Wayne, who chose instead to make The Green Berets.

Saddled with an amusingly overblown and tersely self-serious narration, the vintage featurette Operation Dirty Dozen
is notable for its almost stream-of-consciousness collection of on-set
footage, including bits that would be unfathomable today, such as the
ensemble cast eating at a King’s Road establishment on their day off
(Sutherland scoops cantaloupe!) and Marvin enjoying a rural, dirt-track
motocross race. Cast members Brown, Lopez, Stuart Cooper and Colin
Maitland anchor a robust audio commentary track that includes film
historian David Schow, screen military advisor Dale Dye, producer
Kenneth Hyman and others, but this is advisable only if you’ve already
seen the movie several times, as ahead-glancing spoilers are rampant.

Two new featurettes nicely complement the release. Chock full of
anecdotal reminiscences from the cast (Sutherland is especially
charming), Armed and Deadly: The Making of The Dirty Dozen lasts a half hour, while a second documentary, running over 45 minutes,
details the real-life airborne division that inspired author E.M.
Nathanson to pen his fictional work upon which the film is based.
There’s also a 30-minute recruitment documentary on Marine Corps combat
leadership skills, the ostensible tie-in being Marvin’s narration. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

The brainchild of former 3rd Rock From the Sun show runners Mike Schiff and Bill Martin, Grounded For Life
is a family sitcom that in many ways doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel,
but also makes a few modifications to the well-worn genre that
generally give it a bit of a kick in the pants. The show debuted on Fox
as a mid-season replacement in January of 2001, where it aired for two
seasons before getting quietly snuffed and then traded over to the WB.
It’s subsequently seen a revival on the ABC Family cable network, which
has helped perpetuate confusion as to exactly how long the series has
been around.

The show centers around both Donal Logue and Megyn
Price, who star as Sean and Claudia Finnerty, a fun-loving Staten
Island couple who met in high school and got married when a teenage
pregnancy forced their hand. Now in their early 30s, the excitable
couple have three kids — headstrong teen daughter Lily (Lynsey
Bartilson) and two younger boys, Jimmy (Griffin Frazen) and Henry (Jake
Burbage). The rub, of course, and the source of the title, is that in
becoming parents so young, Sean and Claudia — despite their love for
and unyielding commitment to one another — aren’t really fully settled
adults themselves.

The meddling of Sean’s judgmental, conservative father Walt (Office Space’s
Richard Riehle), and the presence of his kooky, loafer brother Eddie
(Kevin Corrigan), who embodies all of Sean’s extinguished daydreams of
unfettered independence, ensure plenty of contrasting dispositions and
opinions on everything from Lily’s nascent dating practices to familial
shopping trips and birthday gift compromises. The series’ novelty is in
the fashion that it blends traditional, studio-taped segments with
single-camera bits. The general conceit is that there’s some argument,
mishap or misadventure, and this in turn spins back into different
memories of the past that inform or relate to the situation, with these
being the pre-taped bits.

The energy of the cast is what most helps sell these 17 episodes,
along with the relative uniqueness of this parallel construction.
Episodic highlights include “Swearin’ to God,” wherein Sean takes over
as president of the St. Finnian’s parents’ committee, and “We Are
Family,” in which the Finnerty’s plumbing gets busted. On the downside,
Corrigan frequently over-dials the eccentricity as Eddie, and, more
unnervingly, Lily is a thinly veiled knock-off of Kelly Bundy from Married… With Children
— the teen daughter sexpot-in-waiting, albeit here far more
persistently petulant than airheaded. While a definite nod to the
show’s Fox base camp, plotlines like these handicap the series somewhat
as a “tweener,” making it a bit too out-there for full family viewing.

As with their treatment of other Carsey Werner shows (Roseanne, 3rd Rock From the Sun),
distributor Anchor Bay has mostly done right by the series in its
packaging and presentation. Housed in a cardboard slipcase that holds
two slimline cases, the 17 episodes of Grounded For Life’s
second season are spread out over three discs, and presented in a 1.33
full screen transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, that is a solid
duplication of its small screen exhibition. Audio comes courtesy of a
Dolby digital 2.0 track. Eschewing the mondo audio commentaries of the
packed DVD release of the show’s inaugural season, this collection
still features bloopers, a comprehensive (if somewhat dubious)
highlights package and brief interviews with series regulars Burbage,
Frazen and Corrigan. There’s also a three-minute chat with Ashton
Kutcher, who guest stars in an episode as Sean’s daredevil cousin. This
bit, recorded on the set of That ’70s Show, mostly consists of him recounting the plot of said episode, intercut with highlights of the same. C+ (Show) B- (Disc)