Sometimes I’ll watch a lesser known movie from the 70s or 80s, expecting it to be bad or okay at best, and I’ll be immediately blown away by HOW INCREDIBLE it looks. There’s a scene very early on where Walken is just standing under a Chicago rail line and I immediately locked in on the whole movie because it just looked immaculate. Why can’t we make movies look like this anymore???

Anyway, the movie itself is pretty good too.

Sometimes I’ll watch a lesser known movie from the 70s or 80s, expecting it to be bad or okay at best, and I’ll be immediately blown away by HOW INCREDIBLE it looks. There’s a scene very early on where Walken is just standing under a Chicago rail line and I immediately locked in on the whole movie because it just looked immaculate. Why can’t we make movies look like this anymore???

Anyway, the movie itself is pretty good too.

Christopher Walken is gritty and at his best as Jamie Shannon in The Dogs of War, giving us a performance that translates the nihilistic nature of War and the life of a mercenary.

John Irvin’s film is raw and unapologetic, sometimes too much for its own good. The story takes its due time to develop and allows for proper build up. It’s because of this that it’s a shame the invasion sequence feels a bit rushed, even though it lasts 10 minutes.

Christopher Walken is gritty and at his best as Jamie Shannon in The Dogs of War, giving us a performance that translates the nihilistic nature of War and the life of a mercenary.

John Irvin’s film is raw and unapologetic, sometimes too much for its own good. The story takes its due time to develop and allows for proper build up. It’s because of this that it’s a shame the invasion sequence feels a bit rushed, even though it lasts 10 minutes.

I thought I'd seen this before, but it turns out I'd not.

'The Dogs of War' is about mercenaries--interesting how, as a group, 'mercenaries' seemed to hit peak cultural impact in the 70s & early 80s (when this film, among many others, was made) but then dropped in popularity, being replaced by 'commandos' (though more recently, largely due to video games and short attention spans, 'merc' is now in vogue). Anyway, this is one of those mercenary movies--guy gets job from a shady, politically adjacent figure, does some background for job, hires and equips a team, hooks up with some locals, cue training montage-like sequence, and then performs the job, which involves a vast amount of explosions, gunfire, and yelling, all of which results in an absurdly huge body count and a tersely cynical line of dialogue, the end.

So, if you want to see that, this one has all those things with the added benefit of starring Christopher Walken in one of those earlier roles of his that's largely about his terrifying manner of glaring at people and, in addition, sort of attempts to ameliorate the innate racism and political opportunism of these type stories by adding a character named, I kid you not, 'The Black Boy' to look all doe-eyed at Walken in order to remind him to have a conscience or something (note: it does not offset the problem of white guys getting paid to kill Black people for money).

Anyway, well shot, Walken's convincing, stuff blows up, and, perhaps most impressively, it's 2 hour run time (if you watch the 'international version') is incredibly well-paced and really doesn't flag, even though the only real 'action' set pieces occur at the opening and in last 20 or so minutes.

I thought I'd seen this before, but it turns out I'd not.

'The Dogs of War' is about mercenaries--interesting how, as a group, 'mercenaries' seemed to hit peak cultural impact in the 70s & early 80s (when this film, among many others, was made) but then dropped in popularity, being replaced by 'commandos' (though more recently, largely due to video games and short attention spans, 'merc' is now in vogue). Anyway, this is one of those mercenary movies--guy gets job from a shady, politically adjacent figure, does some background for job, hires and equips a team, hooks up with some locals, cue training montage-like sequence, and then performs the job, which involves a vast amount of explosions, gunfire, and yelling, all of which results in an absurdly huge body count and a tersely cynical line of dialogue, the end.

So, if you want to see that, this one has all those things with the added benefit of starring Christopher Walken in one of those earlier roles of his that's largely about his terrifying manner of glaring at people and, in addition, sort of attempts to ameliorate the innate racism and political opportunism of these type stories by adding a character named, I kid you not, 'The Black Boy' to look all doe-eyed at Walken in order to remind him to have a conscience or something (note: it does not offset the problem of white guys getting paid to kill Black people for money).

Anyway, well shot, Walken's convincing, stuff blows up, and, perhaps most impressively, it's 2 hour run time (if you watch the 'international version') is incredibly well-paced and really doesn't flag, even though the only real 'action' set pieces occur at the opening and in last 20 or so minutes.

El existencialista mundo de los mercenarios tan crudamente como se podía mostrar en los 80.

El existencialista mundo de los mercenarios tan crudamente como se podía mostrar en los 80.

El existencialista mundo de los mercenarios tan crudamente como se podía mostrar en los 80.

El existencialista mundo de los mercenarios tan crudamente como se podía mostrar en los 80.