History Film / PlayDirty

* KillEmAll: Except for the generals back at HQ, every single character ends up dead.

* ShaggyDogStory: When the irregulars find the ammo dump in question, it's revealed to have been a decoy (complete with straw statues as "guards"). They head to Benghazi and find that the real ammo dump is there, and decide to blow it up as a distraction while they steal a boat and flee. Which leads to . . .
** ShootTheShaggyDog: They end up tripping an alarm at the real dump and only manage to do minor damage in the ensuing chaos, which results in the deaths of everybody but Leech and Douglas. Then it's revealed that they made it to the dump less than a day before the actual British army, rendering the entire mission pointless.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: According to Michael Caine, the plot is based on a real WWII operation where a group of Palestinians volunteered to destroy a German fuel depot. As in the movie, the Army advanced faster than expected, and so they leaked the soldiers’ names and expected time of arrival to the Germans, who killed them all.

* BoundAndGagged: The hapless nurse spends her last few scenes tied up in the back of the ambulance, so she can’t run off and alert any German soldiers. Assine shooting could qualify as a MercyKill since tied up as she is, she’s looking at death by starvation once the operation falls apart.
* CruelTwistEnding: The Allies have broken through German lines and are sweeping through the desert - and the fuel dump that needed to be destroyed becomes a crucial objective to be captured. Since headquarters is cut off from the commandos, they tip off the Germans about the impending attack, which ends with everyone but Leech and Douglas killed. The captains flee to nearby Benghazi when the British Army breaks through. Still wearing the German uniforms they’d use to infiltrate enemy lines, the two concoct a white flag of surrender and march out to greet the liberators - and promptly get gunned down by a trigger-happy Tommy.

* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: Averted. The commandos don uniforms of the enemy, loot corpses, revel in insubordination, accept bribes to bring back officers alive,(nearly) rape a German nurse, kill innocent bystanders and otherwise commit egregious and unclean deeds in the name of 'the mission.' What success they have has little do with their combat skills and everything to do with their willingness to "play dirty," and the one time they meet actual resistance sees them getting massacred.

* HopeSpot: After the disastrous attack on the fuel dump, one of the commandos tries to flee by crawling through barbed wire, only to find himself staring at a machine gun. After a moment of horror, the German breaks into a smile and lets the relieved irregular crawl a few more feet before blowing him away.

* ThePeterPrinciple: Douglas is actually an oil company engineer loaned to the Army to work only in fuel transfers and has no actual military experience, but thanks to his rank he gets impressed to lead a commando mission behind enemy lines. While he does make a vital engineering contribution to the mission, his subordinates openly laugh at his efforts at command.

* SuicideMission: A very literal example, as the irregulars aren't actually expected to succeed, but they serve as a decoy for a much larger regular force. Ironically, it's the regulars who drive into a German ambush and get killed, serving as the decoys for the decoys.

** One of them sets off a flare trap while sneaking into the German fuel dump. [[KillEmAll It doesn't go as well for them this time]].

* KillEmAll: The entire squad and the captive nurse are all dead by the end of the movie. The only person who ''might'' still be alive is critically wounded to the point where his demise is only a matter of time.

* ThePeterPrinciple: Douglas is actually an oil company engineer loaned to the Army to work only in fuel transfers and has no actual military experience, not that this saves him from getting impressed to lead a suicide mission. While he does make a vital engineering contribution to the mission, his subordinates openly laugh at his efforts at command.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: The movie delights in demolishing the old-movie notions concerning the ‘rules’ of warfare. The irregulars execute medics and rape prisoners. The Germans, for their part, are also pretty happy to gun down fleeing and surrendering soldiers, and the brief glimpse we have of the British Army is of them gunning down surrendering Germans (actually Leech and Douglas) and claiming that they "didn't see the white flag."

The film takes place during the North African Campaign. After several failed missions in German-held territory, Col. Masters (Nigel Green) wins a reprieve from the double-dealing Brigadier General Blore (Harry Andrews) by offering to destroy a Nazi fuel dump way behind the battle lines. Masters sends out a seven-man patrol headed by the mercenary Captain Cyril Leech (Davenport) but technically commanded by Captain Douglas (Caine), an oil supply officer previously attached to rearward duties. The twist: Every man in this patrol is a convicted criminal.

Released during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, the film is an extraordinarily cynical deconstruction of ElitesAreMoreGlamorous, highlighting both the brutal behavior that's necessary to survive behind enemy lines and how little loyalty and ethics factor into special ops strategy. The patrol start out as [[VillainProtagonist Villain Protagonists]] and get worse as they go, with the biggest threat not being the Nazis but each other - and their unethical, self-serving commanders back at HQ who double-cross them at every opportunity

''Play Dirty'' is a 1969 war film by Andre [=DeToth=] (his last film in fact), starring Creator/MichaelCaine, Harry Andrews, and Nigel Green, and Nigel Davenport.

The film is set during the North African Campaign in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. After several failed missions in German-held territory, Col. Masters (Nigel Green) wins a reprieve from the double-dealing Brigadier General Blore (Harry Andrews) by offering to destroy a Nazi fuel dump way behind the battle lines. Masters sends out a seven-man patrol headed by the mercenary Captain Cyril Leech (Davenport) but technically commanded by Captain Douglas (Caine), an oil supply officer previously attached to rearward duties. The twist: Every man in this patrol is a convicted criminal.

Released during the Vietnam War, the film is an extraordinarily cynical deconstruction of ElitesAreMoreGlamorous, highlighting both the brutal behavior that's necessary to survive behind enemy lines and how little loyalty and ethics factor into special ops strategy. The patrol start out as [[VillainProtagonist Villain Protagonists]] and get worse as they go, with the biggest threat not being the Nazis but each other - and their unethical, self-serving commanders back at HQ who double-cross them at every opportunity

* BlackAndBlackMorality: One side is a group of mass-murdering sociopaths. [[BaitAndSwitchComparison The other side are Nazis]]. The battlefield is presented as a place where moral and ethical rules simply don't exist, which is fairly unusual for a movie set in WWII.

The film was a financial failure, with many at the time suggesting that its bleak tone and BlackAndBlackMorality is inappropriate for a movie set in World War II (which had [[ThoseWackyNazis decidedly clear-cut bad guys]]), while others myopically dismissed it as a ripoff of ''Film/TheDirtyDozen'' (released a year earlier). Years after release it earned something of a cult following thanks to high profile advocates of the film like Martin Scorsese (who included it on a long list of guilty pleasures for the May-June 1998 issue of Film Comment).