Robert Aldrich dissects the underlying ideas with just enough craft and thoughtfulness to make the implications of this gritty 1966 war drama unsettling in not entirely constructive ways. Lee Marvin heads a commando platoon of psycho misfits on a mission to destroy an R & R retreat for German officers. The film is tangier in its early sections, in which Marvin trains and welds the group into a unit that can beat the army at its own game. With John Cassavetes, Donald Sutherland, Jim Brown, Telly Savalas, Clint Walker, Trini Lopez, Charles Bronson, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Webber.