The Dogs of War (1980)

Starring: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Ed O’Neill, and JoBeth Williams
Grade: B

The XM-18 gun that Christopher Walken’s Jamie is using in the movie poster and later in the film is legitimately one of the best movie weapons of all time.

Summary

The film opens with a quote from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser:

“Cry “Havoc!” and let slip… The Dogs of War”.

In Central America in 1980, Jamie Shannon (Walken) captains a group of mercenaries including Drew Blakeley (Berenger), Terry (O’Neill), Michel (Jean-François Stévenin), Derek (Paul Freeman), and another guy, driving them on a jeep through a chaotic landscape and straight to a boarding plane. They are told the plane is for members of the provisional government only, but they force their way on, with Jamie telling everyone on the plane to look straight ahead. One member of Jamie’s team is dead and sitting next to Drew, so the British guy tries to get the man of the plane. Drew puts a grenade in the guy’s hand, pulls the pin, and holds his hand on top of his fellow mercenary to ensure the guy can’t be forced out. Jamie doubles down and tells the British guy that all of his men leave with him. Derek forces the pilots at knifepoint to take off, and they do just as a series of bombs are blown off.

Sometime after, Jamie comes back to his apartment in New York. He grabs a beer from the fridge, where his gun is, and closes the door. He kills a cockroach and grabs his mail. Sitting down, he puts the mail in a drawer where another gun is, and he pulls out a picture of him and his estranged wife Jesse (Williams). Glancing at it momentarily, he puts it back in the desk drawer and watches some television. The next day, Jamie gets some groceries, and some kids ask if he has any money. He allows one of the kids to carry his grocery bag back to his building and pays him, though he tells the kid he can always be a beggar when he grows up. At night, Jamie’s employer Endean (Hugh Millais) comes to Jamie’s apartment complex to see him, but Jamie tells the doorman he doesn’t know him so he can’t come up. He goes back to playing chess by himself for some reason. His doorbell starts to ring, so Jamie grabs a gun from a different drawer and answers it. It’s Endean. When Jamie asks how he got up there, Endean just responds “Yes” and walks in. Soon after, Endean talks about the corporate interests he represents and contemplates investing several hundred millions in the development of certain resources in a country in West Africa called Zangaro, a place Jamie has never heard of. The president is Olu Kimba, a dictator who is always in the news. Before money is invested in Zangaro however, they have to know a lot more about the stability of Kimba’s regime. If a coup d’état is imminent or possible, they have to find out. Jamie thinks they can get this information through the embassy, but Endean knows no one has diplomatic relations with a maniac like Kimba. With the world running short on commodities, he thinks one day they will be going to war over rice, stressing the importance of this job. Endean adds that this job pays $10,000, but Jamie won’t do it for any less than $15,000. He wants half tomorrow and the rest when he gets back. Endean agrees, despite it only be a reconnaissance job. The two are in a blacked-out car discussing details, and Endean thinks Jamie going in with such a conspicuous cover is unnecessarily risky, but Jamie knows he needs a cover that allows him to go into Zangaro with a camera.

Endean thinks he should go as a tourist, but Jamie doesn’t think a tourist would have a good enough reason to go to Zangaro. Endean doesn’t care. He just notes that this recon job is useless if Jamie doesn’t come back. Jamie isn’t worried about this however because he always comes back. Under the alias “Keith Brown”, Jamie flies to Zangaro and looks at a booklet of birds on the way in preparation for his backstory. At customs, Jamie sees a framed picture of President Olu Kimba on the wall. The border guard questions his business in Zangaro, and Jamie tells him that he works for a nature magazine and takes pictures of birds. The guard is suspicious, so he sends Jamie to the back room for his bag to be searched. The guard finds a bottle of alcohol in his stuff, and Jamie’s excuse is that there might be a problem with the water. The guard confirms there is. He pulls out Jamie’s cartons of cigarettes and a penthouse magazine and then has him empty his pockets. He has a few different types of currency on him, and the guard pockets some of the money on account of a made-up airport tax and importation tax. Following this, he stamps Jamie’s passport and allows him into the country. Shortly after exiting the building, a priest (Andre Toffel) asks if Jamie would like a ride into town, so he accepts and sits in the back of his van with two nuns. They ride into Clarence, and Jamie is dropped off at Hotel Independence. He called ahead of time about a room, but they have no record of it. He wants a room for around four to five days though, so the front desk worker Dexter (Thomas Baptiste) sees what he can do. When Jamie asks if Dexter has something quiet in the back of the hotel, Dexter tells him that foreigners are restricted to the second floor. They are also required to keep Jamie’s passport until he leaves. This surprises him but he’s not given a choice, so he gives it up and is given Room 12. From his room, he already starts to take pictures of the public outside. Sirens are heard and soldiers drive through the area. Later, he leaves the hotel, and Dexter has a jeep waiting for him. Jamie tries to leave, but the keys aren’t there. This is because he is appointed a driver named Geoffrey (Gyearbuor Asante) who watches him struggle to look for the keys before he takes the driver’s seat himself.

Geoffrey only drives him to certain locations and acts as a tour guide, though he doesn’t speak English. He takes Jaime into a certain part of the jungle for Jamie to take pictures, and Jamie loses him purposely for a bit. Geoffrey runs around in a panic looking for him before going back to his car. Jamie then reappears and gets back in the jeep with him. They’re both annoyed with each other. When they get back to Clarence, a documentary film crew is filming some citizens being harassed by soldiers, but the soldiers get in the film crew’s face and force them out of the area, just as Jamie and Geoffrey drive by. Later in the hotel, Jamie goes to the lobby and tells Dexter that the driver he sent isn’t going to work out, but Dexter said he didn’t send him. Just then, the film crew shows up, as they were forced all the way back to Hotel Independence, a place they are staying too. The director is Alan North (Colin Blakely), and he yells at the soldiers that they can’t make a movie about their country from the hotel, but they don’t respond to him. They just leave. An agitated Alan goes to Dexter to see if he has any messages, but the wireless is out. When he asks if it will be in soon, Dexter changes the subject and introduces Alan to Jamie because he’s an American. The two have a drink at the hotel bar together. There, they discuss the Russians, how there were a couple of mining engineers there a few months ago doing a survey, and how the Russians got on to it and sent a couple of guys down there. They haven’t been able to get a government permit, and they’re pissed. A soldier comes into the hotel bar, has the bartender pour a drink, and forces everyone in the room toast to Kimba. Next, he turns to Jamie and talks about him being this “American naturalist” and how Kimba shares Jamie’s interest in their wildlife, especially their native birds. He invites him to have another drink, so the bartender refills Jamie’s glass. After he drinks it, the soldier goes on about how Kimba doesn’t have time to research the scientific names of some of the rare species. Once again, he tells Jamie to drink, but he declines and has them pour another into Alan’s cup instead, who Jamie jokingly refers to as his father.

To test Jamie, the soldier pulls out a card, saying that Kimba would be pleased if Jamie could give him the scientific name for the “great crested grebe”. Jamie declines and says some other time. He almost leaves the room but decides to make an exception for the soldier, giving him the scientific name of the bird as Podiceps cristatus.

He then asks one for the Storm petrel to which Jamie retorts “Hydrobates pelagicus”. Jamie names a few more angrily, toasts to them, and tells the soldier to drink, but the soldier refuses because public drunkenness is a crime in Zangaro. The soldier leaves in a huff. Following this, Dexter’s daughter Gabrielle (Maggie Scott) sees Jamie and Alan on her way out the door, and she tells Jamie that she will take him around town tomorrow at 8AM. Alan sits with Jamie in the lobby after hours in the darkness to talk some more, and he seems to know that Jamie is no expert on birds. Jamie asks what Alan, and his group got in trouble for. Alan details how soldiers were hauling off a young kid, and he was scared and trying to get away. He pulled free momentarily, but one of the soldiers drove a bayonet through his throat. Alan’s crew got the whole thing on camera, but the soldiers ripped the film out of the camera and sent them back to the hotel. Jamie is surprised Kimba would even let him and his crew in Zangaro, but Alan admits he’d be more surprised if he lets them out. Continuing, he gives Jamie a little history lesson on Zangaro. After the country won its independence, there were three candidates for the presidency. They were General Kimba, Colonel Bolbi (George Harris), and a physician and moderate named Dr. Okoye (Winston Ntshona). Okoye wanted to maintain links with the mother country, but the two “gallant freedom fighters” ranted about neo-colonialism and other stuff. Kimba got elected. A week after he took office, he forced Bolbi into exile and threw Okoye in prison. When Jamie asks if any opposition still exists, Alan explains how this is considered treason to Kimba, and he will have someone’s entire family murdered if this were the case. Other neighboring countries invading aren’t a worry either because Kimba isn’t a threat to any other country. He is content with staying within his borders and slaughtering his own. Since there is so much of this everywhere else in the world, nobody wants to know what’s happening in Zangaro. Next, he wonders if Jamie is CIA or KGB, but Jamie excuses himself after thanking Alan for the drink and heads up to his room.

The next day, Gabrielle takes Jamie to the outside of Kimba’s residence. It belonged to the British governor in colonial times. Even so, he doesn’t live there anymore. Apparently, God spoke to him in a dream and told him to live among his warriors in the garrison. She says this as we see a bust of Kimba with the head blown off. Going further into town, Gabrielle talks about how in 1937, the colonial government erected new ministerial offices. It resulted in the first electricity in Zangaro. A year later, the Grand Pavillion was built. He wonders if she has a passport because he can’t believe she’d stay here, but Gabrielle explains that what she does is purely out of circumstance, not choice. Looking into a church, Gabrielle states that Kimba is head of the church when Jamie wonders if he’s Christian. He brings up how he saw the priest and two nuns upon getting to the country, and Gabrielle admits there have been difficulties with the missionary work. However, now, Kimba’s name is included in the Lord’s Prayer, so there aren’t issues anymore. Going to the upstairs of the church, Jamie peers in to see a camp with walls around it. He asks if this is where Kimba lives while he takes a picture of it, so Gabrielle closes the shutters on him because the details regarding the garrison are not available to anyone. Once the two get back into town, Jamie positions Gabrille to be photographed in front of the garrison because he wants the background for his recon mission, but he acts like she’s the focus of the picture and it’s for his scrapbook. In the evening, Jamie and Gabrielle have a drink outside the hotel, and she asks what he’s really doing there. He insists it’s for the birds and asks her out to dinner, but they are interrupted by sirens. She says she’s late for something and leaves. That night, Jamie dresses in black and goes out to get a closer look at the garrison. One soldier spots him, but he is able to take him out.

Unfortunately, he wakes up in the morning, and the soldier that questioned him about the birds is in the room along with a bunch more soldiers. They wake him up, beat the hell out of him, and take him to prison to beat him some more. The soldier asks why he is in Clarence and why he took the photo of Gabrielle in front of the garrison, but Jamie just says she’s pretty, refusing to divulge details. He’s taken back to a cell, and Dr. Okoye is brought in to help clean his wounds, as he’s a prisoner there too. Jamie is to be deported and released because Alan has been at the prison all day trying to talk with Jamie and interview him. Okoye also says that Alan filed a formal protest to the Swiss counsel and that it’s clear Jamie has made a friend. Once Okoye reveals he’s a prisoner, he’s been there for over four years for what he calls “bad judgment”, and he was a candidate for president, Jamie realizes this is Dr. Okoye. Okoye is surprised Jamie knows who he is, and Jamie says Alan was the one who told him. Okoye lets Jamie know he’s been there since yesterday. Jamie wonders why they would do this, so Okoye thinks it’s bad company because he was with Gabrielle who is one of Kimba’s mistresses. This wasn’t her doing and Okoye does note her beauty, considering it a currency in Zangaro. Unfortunately, this currency only has value in the presidential palace. He gives Jamie some painkillers and leaves once the soldiers come to grab Jamie. They put a black bag over his head and put him in a vehicle at gunpoint. Kimba watches as they drive away. Upon arrival at the hotel with the soldiers behind him, Alan has the camera filming and tries to ask him about why he was imprisoned and what the conditions were like. Jamie doesn’t answer, but Alan puts something in his hand during the frenzy. Geoffrey approaches him, laughing and revealing he can speak English. He tells Jamie he can’t leave Zangaro without his passport before calling him an asshole like Jamie did earlier when he didn’t think Geoffrey spoke English. With this, Jamie is deported and sent back to America.

He is told by Dr. Henry that he doesn’t have any fractures, but he now has had 6 concussions in the last three years, “two crushed discs, two temporal fractures, one major pneumothorax, perforated stomach, a hundred bouts with unheard of tropical diseases, a shitload of arm and leg fractures, dyscrasia, dysentery, dyspepsia, dysuria, and dysphoria”. Currently, he still has blood in his urine too. There are probably more things wrong, but Jamie cuts him off after dysphoria to ask if there is anything else with the letter “D” that he didn’t get, so Henry replies “Dead”. After Henry helps Jamie put his coat on and walks him out the door, he tells Jamie that he’s taken a lot of years off his life and implies he should consider retiring from whatever he does. Back at his apartment, Endean shows up and is bothered Jamie didn’t call him as soon as he got back. Unsurprisingly, Jamie isn’t in the mood and demands his money. Endean gives it to him, and Jamie gives him his report. Before opening it, Endean asks if Kimba can be replaced or if there is any chance for a coup. Confidently, Jamie tells him “No”. Kimba doesn’t trust his own army, he rations his bullets, and he’s crazy. Unless there’s some guerilla army building up outside of Zangaro that he doesn’t know about, he tells Endean to forget it. Endean says the people he represents won’t do business with a madman, so Kimba needs to go. He wonders if a well-trained, well-equipped mercenary force could succeed at “replacing” Kimba, so Jamie stops counting his money to ask what they found in Zangaro. He brings up oil and diamonds, but Endean ignores this and asks again if it could succeed. Jamie doesn’t see why not, so Endean inquires how long it would take for Jamie to get an operation like this off the ground. Jamie refuses to consider it. He got paid with the recon mission, and he’s done with the place. Endean says he’s paid, but he’s not finished. He asks how much it would take for Jamie to go back and get “what they took from you”. He offers Jamie $100,000, but Jamie refuses and kicks him out of his apartment.

He drives to the Bayview Hotel and calls his wife Jessie. The only reason he’s there is because it’s a couple of blocks from where the Starlight was before it burned down two years ago. It was a place they had history at. He insists he’s okay, but he wants to see her. However, he wants her to come to him, as he doesn’t want to run into Jessie’s father who is there in the house playing cards with his friends. She tells Jamie to give her a half hour. Jessie leaves the house to see Jamie and Jamie lays it all on the line. He loves her, he wants to move West to Colorado or Montana, get a regular job, buy a house, and he’s got the money to get them started. He wants to leave soon or as soon as possible. Jesse appreciates his efforts but just wants to keep things simple tonight. They have sex, but she sees it as closure between them and leaves. With nothing else left in his life and no other alternative path in sight, Jamie relents and accepts Endean’s offer. He is to collect his team and head back to Zangaro to remove Kimba from office.

My Thoughts:

Within action cinema, I will always have a soft spot for the team-up, ensemble war film. Getting together a ragtag group of badass action stars and going into either a small, relatively unknown fictional country or behind enemy lines in a real country to complete some death-defying, anything-can-happen mission is one of my favorite subgenres. Almost every single film with this premise is watchable. All it needs is a cool main actor to lead the pack and the rest can be filled with shootouts and explosions. It’s a great recipe for an entertaining action movie. The Dirty Dozen, The Expendables, Escape to Athena, and The Wild Geese are just a sliver of such examples because we can go all day with it really. Here, The Dogs of War takes the same approach, though it’s more of a slow burn compared to its contemporaries.

What works for John Irvin’s movie is that this cerebral approach allows for the hype and terror surrounding the fictional country they are to invade build up to the point where the viewer understands how serious this mission is. This is not an adventure. The focus becomes the severity of a potential failure, and the understanding of why it could be so frightening if it happens. The Dogs of War are mercenaries going into the Zangaro mission for a huge payday, but they are realistic in that they may not come back if their strategy isn’t meticulously planned out to the “T”. On a first watch, you may find that it drags. On the other hand, a second watch has made the story, its pacing, and why the movie goes in the directions it does much clearer. It’s still not the best example of this subgenre, but it stands out as unique compared to other films similar to it. You can tell this screenplay had its hands in writers and directors that took the source material a little more seriously than some of the cheekier ensemble war movies. Really, the tone-setter is star Christopher Walken. Most action stars could still fit the story of The Dogs of War, but just their presence would change the tone of the movie. Sporting perfect hair, Walken moves, talks, and carries himself like the icy cold mercenary Jamie Shannon is. He doesn’t try to be a Sylvester Stallone or anything. He’s just a paid killer. He gives off the aura of someone who has been through some shit, lives a private life and doesn’t let anyone in, and has seen the worst of the world. He’s got no one. Even when he’s asked for a beneficiary over the phone for his payment in the case that he dies in the mission, he asks the local kid in the lobby of the apartment what his name is to give it to him. Jessie is his last hope, but she assures him there isn’t anything there anymore. Basically, he’s got nothing, which makes him fearless and more importantly, ruthless. There’s no reason for the viewer to like him, but somehow, we do. It’s because there is this slight vulnerability in him that we latch onto.

It’s not seen outwardly by the characters, but his incensed reactions to everyone else following the first visit to Zangaro and prison beatdown shows how secretly worried he is about heading back there. It could mean doom, and he knows it. What’s cool about it is how Jamie doesn’t care who he pisses off anymore at this point. Though the whole thing is set up by Endean, Jamie still calls the shots to him and dares Endean to fire him, refusing to tell him his strike plan. He does the same with Colonel Bolbi, despite the whole job being getting him in office over Kimba. Even so, Jamie doesn’t care. Bolbi subtly threatens him by pointing out how it could help him out by being his friend once he becomes president (which I don’t understand because it’s not like Jamie would ever go back), but Jamie retorts that he’s got enough friends and doesn’t want any more. On top of that, he refuses Bolbi’s offer of his 24 loyal soldiers and in a final “Fuck you” to both him and Endean, Jamie is adamant about the two getting there at the garrison on the 25th at 5AM adding, “If you’re a minute late, I give the whole thing back to Kimba”. Jamie is expendable. He knows it, and Endean confirms it to Bolbi after Jamie leaves the room. Why should he try to act friends with them and back down? Endean thinks Jamie knows nothing about the platinum in Zangaro and he assures his employer that Manson Industries will have exclusive mineral and mining rights to the poor, chaotic country. However, Jamie does know what’s at stake, even if he may not know the exact details. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be attempting a coup at a place where he was positive would be a suicide mission. Knowing he could die, it makes him fearless and it’s delectable to watch onscreen with so many nefarious personalities with ulterior motives. That’s why he killed one of Endean’s guys and sits him in his office chair. He doubles and even triples down. Why? Because “Fuck you” that’s why! I love it. The attitude Walken carries post-prison makes Jamie such a badass, and his kill-or-be-killed performance in the role is fantastic, capped off with his wide-eyed, one-man army takedown of the palace that is everything.

He does have a heart though, and he shows just enough of it to make sure the audience knows they’re following the right guy. Action hero fans will love Walken’s Jamie Shannon. That is a guarantee. It’s The Dogs of War‘s biggest attraction.

Though most will find that this movie is only worth a one-time viewing, it is important to note the difference of opinion you may have between a first and second time viewing like I stated before. For instance, the first time around, the sequence where Jamie attempts to reconnect with Jessie and they meet up and sleep together felt out of place and was just putting off the inevitable. On the other hand, a second watch made me realize that it was relatively important in showing Jamie’s personal life and why he’s left with no other option to pursue the big mission. For the record, there’s not a single person watching the movie that thought he wasn’t going to find his way back in Zangaro at some point, but to tell the story logically, it did explain some things. Considering how low-key Jamie is and how there aren’t a lot of scenes that would make sense for him to speak about his personal problems, especially because his closest friends are fellow mercenaries and they don’t want to hear about it and he can’t tell Alan anything more because he’s a journalist, there needed to be some action on Jamie’s part to show some depth to his character. When this is realized, this little aside with Jessie is more understandable. Even so, it was a bit mundane, and it’s dragging down of the pace was only magnified by the fact that there isn’t nearly as much action in totality as you’d expect for a movie like this. Obviously, it was by design, as it made the climax feel like this gigantic event. It goes without saying that this approach did work in spades, as the ending was what made the film as memorable as it was. It was the perfect feather in the cap to the production as a whole and left the viewer with a satisfying feeling. In addition, there was a concerted effort to show the realism behind the preparation a hired mercenary team goes through before they attempt something as serious as a coup d’état, which is why the movie’s events happen as they do. As authentic as the planning the characters go through, and I give them credit for their intentions, I still can’t help but admit that it was a little boring, with the exception of Jamie hyping the troops up in the final meet-up (“You gotta be alive to get paid”; “Kimba, kick his ass!”).

This scene was one of those eye-openers, as Jamie establishes the details and how once the firefight begins, they only got 15 minutes and it’s 10 minutes to the bridge. It’s a call to arms, and Jamie knows they have to be near perfect with their plan. It resonates with the viewer because we know what Jamie went through in his first trip to Zangaro. Think about it. Endean offered him $100,000 to return with his team at first, and he turned it down without a second thought. That’s how awful the iron-fisted Kimba is and how badly Jamie was beaten in that prison. If they get caught while attempting to overthrow the country, the hell reigned upon them would be something they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. When Jamie tells Lockhart the meet-up spot, he brings up the hypothetical of him not getting there on time saying, “If not, I hope I get killed”. He knows better than anyone what they’re up against, and it translates majorly to the awesome, hair-raising climax. I would argue that this sequence was all that was truly needed for the build though. Scenes like Michel putting guns in barrels and being stopped at the border, Jamie’s deal with Benny for $10,000 for the “end users certificate”, Derek’s offer to Lockhart for him and his crew because of his cargo (“Trouble”), or Drew’s amusing meeting with Hackett over the taxes piled on to his munitions request ALL could have been condensed into more of a faster-paced montage instead of the series of extended scenes that they were. As it stands, all of them in succession in the manner in which they are presented bring the energy of the movie down to just below sea level. In the hotel scene where Jamie tells everyone the directions that they are about to go in like getting the clean freighter and the weapons which sets up the more boring sequences (“Everybody goes home”), he says they only have 38 days. Let me tell you, it felt like 38 days with how it’s carried out.

The details are well written and researched but aren’t cinematically pleasing because they’re all back-to-back-to-back information dumps, so there needed to be a special type of editing done or creative visual decision to not lose the viewer’s interest when it’s happening. Again, in a second watch, it works slightly more, but most are only going to watch the movie once. The same argument can be made about Jamie’s meeting with arms dealer Baker where the “ultimate in killing technology” XM-18 is discussed, though I will admit the exchange where Baker tries to round up the “31.5” price tag to “32” and Jamie tells him “31.5” and hands him $15k on the spot, promising $10k when he sees the stuff crated and ready and the rest of the balance when the ship sails. Jamie’s no-nonsense, get-to-the-point attitude is delightful and is again a great tone-setter for the narrative. I can’t praise it enough. Regardless, in place of the aforementioned sluggish scenes, there needed to be AT LEAST one more action sequence. It didn’t matter whether it was a chase scene or another shootout or something. There just needed to be a little more to keep the audience awake before the finale. The car running over Alan wasn’t enough, though I did like the interrogation scene of the Endean-sent driver and Jamie and Drew, especially after Jamie lets him know he’s going to die no matter what he tells him but how he can make it painless if he snitches. Breaking the window of a door and using some of the glass to put in the guy’s mouth and slapping him was badass! Some modern action movies need to take some notes on the ruthlessness of this film.

Other areas were just mishandled. Tom Berenger, who was in crazy shape for this movie by the way, was underutilized. He’s stated before how much of his character’s scenes were cut from the final product, and it shows. We know virtually nothing about Derek and Michel. Despite them being dedicated members of the team and the mission, it was legitimately hard to differentiate them because their names aren’t said that much, and they are both very unassuming. Ed O’Neill’s few scenes as Terry offered the most depth out of any of the mercenaries sans Jamie, but it doesn’t work from an emotional sense. It’s obvious that Terry is throwing out this hackneyed story of his sister’s marriage crumbling and how her and her kids are staying with him as his reasoning for not being able to go, but it’s just because he’s shook from their last mission and isn’t ready to go back out yet. With this in mind, the idea behind the scene is good, but it just doesn’t work and there’s no follow-up to it. The character, which could have strengthened the emotional depth of the story, came off as more of a cameo rather than an explored supporting role to show the horrors of their career field. It was a missed opportunity that only would have helped the movie. To make matters worse, the following scene has Jamie not care at all about Terry’s decision because he doesn’t have time to dwell on it and Drew is mad because he feels like he has more of a reason to back out than Terry because his wife Miranda is pregnant. He’s actually offended that Terry is scared of dying, as if it’s a bad thing. Alan’s flip flopping from daring filmmaker to annoying journalist asking too many questions was unexpected, but he was a decent supporting character that did well in his information dumps to Jamie. They were placed in just the right moments, and it added a lot of mystery to the narrative. When they go to a bar for a quick drink, and Jamie clearly doesn’t want to be there but relents because he’s worried how much Alan knows about his situation, I was intrigued as to how far it would go. It starts to make you suspicious of everyone just like how Jamie gets.

Then, you have Alan letting Jamie know that his exile from Zangaro resulted in Kimba’s paranoia rising, prompting him to go through with 9 executions the next day with 4 of them being women. It’s just enough to remind the audience the tyrant they are facing. I loved the twist regarding Bolbi’s similarities to Kimba too, which Jamie can’t help but notice, as it ultimately becomes the deciding factor as to why the ending happens as it does. You had to know there was going to be more to it when Bolbi earnestly states the difference between him and Kimba proudly in that, “He wants to be God. I want to be rich”.

Though I’ve already stated it before, the ending was awesome. It just took a while to reach the best parts of the film and that stopped The Dogs of War from reaching a higher grade. There were just too many dragged out scenes that almost encourage you to lose interest. Thankfully, Christopher Walken refuses to make the movie fail and does a great job in carrying every scene he’s in because of how compelling and tough he is. Along with a great job at detailing the ins and outs of the fictional country of Zangaro, some great shots like the silhouette of the defeated Jamie leaving Zangaro the first time, the all-around intensity, the excitement surrounding the politics of the three leaders of Zangaro, and the action (when they get to it) is good enough to make this yet another entertaining ensemble, action war extravaganza. At the same time, the horrors of their work aren’t forgotten in the midst of the action, which is cool to note. Once they drive away in silence following the aftermath of what happened, there is a newfound appreciation for the authenticity of The Dogs of War.

Fun Fact: Originally, the film was to be directed by Don Siegel, but he didn’t like the screenplay. Michael Cimino ended up helping with the draft and Norman Jewison got involved as producer. Cimino was to direct at this point, and it would star Clint Eastwood and Nick Nolte. However, Cimino dropped out to do Heaven’s Gate. United Artists also wanted Sylvester Stallone, Sean Connery, or Burt Reynolds to star, but eventual director John Irvin was against this because none of them would fit the low profile of the main character, which I actually agree with. David Bowie was approached to play Alan North, but he was busy writing his album Scary Monsters and passed on it.