Post by Eddie Love on Mar 5, 2011 11:17:45 GMT -5
THE EXPENDABLES didn’t invent the practice of cobbling together a cast of declining stars entering their twilight years for some latter-day exploits of mercenary mayhem. A summit of British and international actors assembled in 1978 to take flight as THE WILD GEESE, a film that’s one of those irresistible productions of it’s day, albeit one with a heart of darkness that beats beneath the Boy’s Own trappings.
The film details a mission undertaken by weathered mercenary Richard Burton to storm into a prison to rescue the leader of an African nation who, though believed dead, is in fact being held by the strongman who overthrew him. British business interests now want that prisoner sprung as leverage over the current ruler in a bid to make it easier to negotiate mineral rights in the region. Burton has a few weeks in London to put together a plan and get the band back together. He reaches out first to his old colleague (Richard Harris), once a liberal idealist (mercenary?) he now lives contentedly with his young son. But Burton, and the cause of African self-determination he once held dear, lures him and his logistical genius back into the fight. Also on board is an Irishman now running errands for the American mob (Roger Moore) and a disillusioned Afrikaner desperate to return home (Hardy Kruger). They’ll lead the ragtag band of 40 men who’ll first train in the African bush.
Hard to believe, this movie was made only a few years after Richard Burton was the highest paid film star in the world, and it’s painful to watch him struggle with the action scenes. We see him sprinting along and diving for the dirt, and you’re likely to be holding your breath along with him. You can almost see the fear in his eyes at these moments, and it’s not necessarily acting. He does evidence some of his former dramatic glory, though, and he’s at his best when he unleashes that still magnificent crackling voice on his aristocratic bosses. He also registers the horror of one fallen comrade at the end, and it’s perhaps overplayed, but still powerful.
Harris as his idealistic counterpart is all over the place, but has some compelling bits, even if, when he’s off the mark, the histrionics get pretty appalling. First, he has some cloying scenes with his young son where the un-schooled, effete lad actually comes off as much more natural than Harris. Later, Harris explodes more than a couple times and it occasionally seems false, overblown and distractingly attention grabbing. There’s also a bit where he does a drunken American accent that’s just painful.
But as exhausting as Harris’ overacting can get, at least he showed up to work. We all know that Roger Moore is a lazy, complacent actor, but this is the only time watching him where I felt something approaching contempt. He’s playing an Irishman, yet he makes not the slightest effort to affect any type of accent. He’s just his usual featherweight self, making a series of quips that land like turds in a punchbowl. In a film about men who make war for money, these type of road company, bedroom farce line-readings really irked me.
Interestingly, the lowest wattage name above the title gives the most fully satisfying performance in the movie; Hardy Kruger as the South African eager to return to his home turf, but also loathe to perform the killing that’s his ticket back. In the closing scenes, he has a DEFIANT ONES kind of interplay with the sickly African leader he has to bear on his back and all these scenes are perfectly played by Kruger.
The action that takes up the later half of the film, helmed by Andrew McLaglen may not be thrilling by today’s standards, but it’s pretty hard-hitting, not exactly realistic, but tough and brutal. But, for all its trappings of being a rousing action film, THE WILD GEESE is a pretty biting and nasty picture. I think that’s why it holds up as well as it does. A degree of self-disgust permeates the proceedings. Let’s be clear, this film is about an extra-legal band of post-colonial Brits going to Africa to kill blacks for money – even the supposedly enlightened liberal acknowledges this is their job, and deems it righteous. And kill they do, in fact, a large number of the young black soldiers the Geese take out are asleep at the time! It’s not exactly a fair fight; this is more of an extermination. What we now know about the region’s “child soldiers” make this a little unsettling to watch. (This is also why Moore’s jocularity is so off-key.)
But what I like about THE WILD GEESE is that the filmmakers aren’t oblivious to a lot of these noxious themes that percolate beneath the surface, even if they’re loathe to acknowledge them outright. If they were just making a cartoon – like THE EXPENDABLES – they wouldn’t try and cover their tracks so aggressively. For instance one of the Geese and the saintly African leader are played by the famed black South African acting duo John Kani and Winston Nshona, and the characters they play have no qualms about the men's mission. The fact that they feel the need to downplay the vile implications of the story doesn’t negate these issues, it doesn’t absolve the filmmakers, nor does it make the film merely objectionable. But it indicates that some of the parties involved – scenarist Reginald Rose (12 ANGRY MEN), Burton -- are aware this is dangerous territory.
And the price the Geese pay is so awful and futile that at the end of the day, their actions, and the films “heroics” are boldly exposed as absurd. (Yeah, there’s a rueful tone at the end of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but we never doubt that the Seven were doing the right thing. Here there’s no question the mission wasn’t worth it.) And for all the corruption of the backward African nation run by murderous warlords, are the British themselves that much better? We see the titled captains of finance and industry in league with gangsters, mercenaries and even the corrupt African rulers they affect to dispose as they undermine (one hopes) their own government.
In another effort to militate the racial problems of the picture (and in doing so, frankly acknowledging them) Joan Armatrading supplied the theme song and I’m not entirely sure THE WILD GEESE deserves this thrilling song. It’s quirky, yet hauntingly beautiful, and played against striking images of war-torn Africa during a Maurice Binder credit sequence, it’s really powerful. It’s one of the reasons that this picture may haunt you a bit long after the last explosion has died down.
By the way, the “Special Edition” DVD of this picture is a treasure trove of unintentional laughs. There are bizarre fetishistic menu options that take you straight to scenes of different episodes of carnage or explosions in the movie. There’s a hilariously self-aggrandizing documentary portrait of the film’s producer, Euon Lloyd wherein he supplies lots of anecdotal evidence of his taste and class throughout. He’s also on hand for a commentary track along with editor John Glen and Sir Roger, whose participation possibly accounts for the newfound prominence of his face and name on the poster that adorns the disc. But maybe best of all is the charity premiere footage of the film’s Leicester Square premiere, which the booming voice of the British announcer tells us, is to benefits “spastics!” It’s like something out of Monty Python.