ShangLuda
Admirable film.
Keira Brennan
The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Tayb Elfenstein
I guess the Wild Geese (1978) is the best comparison because it is a movie of the same era with a somewhat similar story - "good" mercenaries fighting a cruel dictator in some poor African country. However, when the Wild Geese is filled with stars, here we have only one - but he happens to be Christopher Walken.Not only Christopher's but most of the actors' performance is good, the plot is rather realistic, the movie does not feel like a cheap copy made during the mercenary/vigilante movie boom, and the length is optimal, less than two hours. Those who enjoy good action movies with less tongue-in-cheek (Wild Geese, Expendables) have to see this.
SimonJack
"The Dogs of War" of 1974 is an early third world action film that combines several themes. A tyrant is in control of the fictitious African country of Zangaro. The local people are oppressed. A British mining company eyes the country for its deposits of a rare mineral. A rebel leader in exile has designs on a coup and taking over the rule of the country. The industrialists and he strike up a deal. The mining group hires Jammie Shannon to organize and lead a mercenary force to overthrow the reigning tyrant, and install the new tyrant who will be friendly to the money mongers. Shannon goes to the country to scout it out and he is tortured by the leader's henchmen. So, he also has a personal score to settle. Christopher Walken plays Shannon, and he assembles a group of former fellow mercenaries. They do the job, but it's not quite how the exiled rebel leader, the mining moguls or the reigning tyrant expected. For all of their killing and mayhem, the mercenaries have something of a code of ethics. The personal danger in films like this is that a person may find oneself applauding or favoring the killing of many people. However bad they are, this is violence on a large scale. Walken and the entire cast do very well in this action thriller. It was filmed in Belize. The movie is based on a novel by British author Frederick Forsyth (born Aug. 25, 1938). He is one of the more popular authors of crime-suspense-thriller-action stories on whose books movies have been made since the third quarter of the last century. Two other such authors are John le Carré and John Grisham. Forsyth had considerable experiences and background in the milieu in which his novels are set. Forsyth was an RAF fighter pilot during the Cold War, and is a former newspaper reporter and spy. He joined Reuters news service in 1961 and the BBC in 1965. During that time, he served as an assistant diplomatic correspondent. He had covered the Nigerian civil war in 1967 when the BBC decided to end its coverage in favor of the growing coverage of the Viet Nam war. So, Forsyth quit the BBC and returned to Biafra on his own. He spent two years reporting on and observing that civil war as he wrote his first book. During that time and for some 20 years, he worked as a spy for M16 British Intelligence. Several of Forsyth's books have been made into movies – some with considerable alteration. His books have sold more than 70 million copies. The fictional country in this movie is based upon Equatorial Guinea, which once was a Spanish colony. Among Forsyth's other best- selling novels that have been made into movies are "The Odessa File" in 1974, "The Fourth Protocol" in 1987, "The Day of the Jackal" in 1997, the TV movie, "Icon," in 2005, and "Avenger," another TV movie in 2006.The expression "dogs of war" may first have been used by William Shakespeare. It appears in a line from his 1599 play, "Julius Caesar." In Act III, Scene 1, Antony bereaves the murder of Caesar and says loudly toward the end, "Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." Another film, about WW II, used part of this same line. "Cry Havoc" of 1943 was about the Army nurses on Bataan who were caring for the Allied wounded and who became prisoners of the Japanese.
Guy
Plot: A team of mercenaries are hired to overthrow an African dictator.Adapted from the Frederick Forsyth novel (or 'how to' guide depending on your tastes in fiction), this is a superior thriller from that wonderful moment in the 1970s (well, 1980 in this case) when low-key realism and humanity were so important. After a bravura escape scene in South America the plot shifts to the US where the protagonist (an excellent Christopher Walken) is hired to reconnaissance a fictional African country for a coup. Captured, tortured and released he then ends up leading aforementioned coup. It's tough, realistic and with a good eye for detail and the mechanics of launching a coup. Unfortunately it all falls apart in the climax as it turns into an overblown action movie full of our heroes shooting from the hip and giant orange gasoline explosions. This appears to be the fault of the grenade launcher carried by the main character -- a desire to use it in-film leading to silly sequences. The inevitable moral ending, with the bad African dictator replaced by a good African president, also feels deeply naive.
AirborneRanger
The Dogs of War is perhaps one of the finest war movies ever made and is the best mercenary movie ever made. From a technical and tactical perspective (with one notable exception when the four main characters stand together improbably for a moment) the movie is extremely accurate and gets both the details of the business correct and the tactics of such an operation correct.There was a time in the 60s, 70s and 80s when these kinds of operations were carried out by men like Mike Hoare. In the aftermath of Vietnam, veterans who felt out of place and out of sync often fell in with the mercenary crowd, willing to fight someone else's battle for money or loot.Perhaps one of the more impressive sequences is all of the logistical work which captures the nature of the dark world of the arms deals overseas and how the law is skirted.Chris Walken is especially effective in the title role; believable, yet vulnerable and certainly not the Rambo who always wins the fight.
