Mercenary Movies

I was watching Wild Geese (1978) on Good Friday (if ever there was a film designed for watching on bank holiday afternoons, Wild Geese was surely it), and found myself pondering on the nature of mercenary films.  What they have in common, of course, is a tendency to romanticise the whole concept of the 'Soldier of Fortune', depicting such men as heroic figures turning up in war zones to rescue beleaguered outsiders, bolster the forces of the 'good' guys and generally do what conventional, national, armed forces can't.  This idea of the flamboyant soldier for hire, merrily toting their sten guns on behalf of various 'causes', was popularised by the antics, mainly in Africa, of the likes of 'Mad' Mike Hoare, whose adventures were lapped up by newspapers in the UK, who probably saw there merecenaries as a last expression of imperial power, putting uppity natives in their place.  The reality of mercenaries was and is, of course, somewhat different - they tend to be socially maladjusted types with no moral compass, no qualms about using violence, who can find no place in a peacetime civil society, so instead ply their trade for money in the most deprived parts of the world.  (To be fair, it is generally only films about twentieth century mercenaries which paint them as romantic anti-heroes - there are a significant number of movies set in earlier eras which portray them in a far less favourable light).

Wild Geese is pretty typical of the genre - set in Africa and dominated by white men.  The scenarios of these films are more often than not informed by the long and bloody conflict in the Congo during the sixties, in which mercenaries played a prominent role.  Dark of the Sun (1965), for instance, is entirely set against the background of the conflict, while the opening scenes of The Last Grenade (1970), which set up the film's central conflict, take place there, (neither of course, was actually filmed in Congo, let alone Africa).  While the novel from which Wild Geese was derived also used the events in the Congo as its background, the film's script makes it all much less specific, substituting one of those convenient fictional African countries to be the backdrop for its action.  What's clear watching the film is that the makers of Wild Geese thought that they were being very progressive in their depiction of race and post-imperial Africa.  There's the whole dialogue between the Afrikaans mercenary and the deposed black African president they are rescuing, with the latter 'educating' the former as to benefits of integration, multi-racialism and his vision of a future Africa where black and white live in perfect harmony.  Not only that but, hey, one of the 'Wild Geese' themselves is a black guy!  And he's liked and respected by his fellow, white, soldiers!  Which just underlines one of the film's fundamental problems - in reality the majority of such a force would have been recruited locally, rather than employing geriatric-looking ex-British army types, with the white European mercenaries providing leadership and training, (something Dark of the Sun gets right).  

The portrayal of the opposing forces is also problematic, with them conforming to the usual imperialist stereotypes of bloodthirsty brutal savages who prefer to hack up their enemies with machetes rather than just shoot them.  (Indeed, at the film's climax, Richard Harris begs Richard Burton to shoot him in order to avoid such an agonising death).  Moreover, they clearly can't be trusted to act as an organised military force, requiring the command of East German and Cubn 'military advisors'.  As is often the case, the producers wanted to have their cake and eat it: on the one hand they wanted to present a progressive face to filmgoers, embracing multi-racialism, (in no small part to stave off criticism of having shot a lot of the movie in Apartheid era South Africa), while simultaneously giving audiences a 'boy's own' type adventure, complete with imperialist attitudes.  But it was a combination of elements that proved popular at the UK box office, (also in Europe and globally, with the exception of the US, where the film's release was disrupted by the distributor, Allied Artists, going out of business).  Seen today, the 'boy's own' adventure aspect is the one that works best, with the film cramming in plenty of spectacular action, even if the leads, Richard Burton and Richard Harris, look as if they should be drawing their pensions rather than jumping out of planes and mowing down hordes of enemy soldiers.  Thankfully, neither they, nor co-star Roger Moore, (who fitted this one in between Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979)), seem to be taking it too seriously.