Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Cast: Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Roger Moore, Hardy Krüger, Stewart Granger, Jack Watson, Frank Finlay, Kenneth Griffith, Ronald Fraser, Barry Foster
Synopsis: Old military farts do their best to prove they’re not past it by trying to rescue an important African politician, a man who’s got such a dodgy ticker that he can’t even stand. In short, no one does any Van Damme-style splits.
Like Kelly’s Heroes, The Eagle Has Landed and Von Ryan’s Express, The Wild Geese is a fun men-on-a-mission pic ideal for Sunday afternoons. None of it is dusted in diamond-hard realism, with events sometimes unfolding in a ‘that’ll do’ sort of way, but it’s off the wall elements always entertain. Akin to that Chuck Norris terrorist extravaganza Invasion USA, its very high body count pleasingly unfolds at Christmas. Some of the soldiers are in their sixties. The Wild Geese is also chock-full of homoeroticism, such as one man being asked: “How would you like to whip fifty men into shape?” Chaps express unbridled joy at being reunited, they talk of love, an actual gay man is held without question at the unit’s bosom, and they’re honoured to die for one another. The ladies are as scarce as subtlety, and the one who actually manages to fit in a few words amid all the testosterone and male bonding naturally gets beaten up. Know thy place, woman!
Oh yeah, The Wild Geese is a faintly nutso 135 minutes, all right.
Fifty-three-year-old Burton heads the impressive ensemble cast, and he gets some good scenes, although it has to be said he puts more effort into his onscreen drinking than doing any physical stuff. The first shot of him is clasping a bottle of whiskey, staring at it so intently that you suspect he’s mulling over the previous year’s disaster, Exorcist II. Is he gonna bother with this movie or just get drunk as a lord?
Hmm, we’ll see…
He plays Colonel Allen Faulkner, a terse, steel-balled mercenary recruited by a shadowy merchant banker to rescue a deposed leader in Southern Africa. At his new employer’s luxurious home he gulps down a double whiskey so fast that it once again raises doubts that this movie is gonna get past first base. Oh, hang on, he’s clarified the matter for us: “I’m dry when I work.”
Mostly true to his word, Faulkner sets about finding fifty men to do the job. You’d think he’d assemble a young, physically fit crew, but for some reason he favours (shall we politely say) experience. He starts with his tried and tested mates, the disillusioned idealist Captain Rafer Janders (fellow hellraiser Harris) and the hard drugs-averse Lieutenant Shawn Flynn (Moore). It comes as little surprise that Faulkner immediately starts necking the booze with Janders, who proclaims: “Let’s drink to something!”
Blimey, this flick might be over after all.
I think they go on to discuss the upcoming mission, but I tend to remember Faulkner admitting: “I’ve got my death all planned: blind drunk, lying on the pavement, roll off, fracture my skull, out.”
The ace aviator Flynn proves a little harder to locate, partly because he’s got a load of mafia goons on his tail after force-feeding the bathrobe-clad, playboy nephew of a crime lord some strychnine-laced heroin. The knockabout way this episode is depicted and resolved never fails to raise a smile.
The capably directed Wild Geese with its occasionally rousing score proves a lot more engaging than the similarly themed, action-lite Dogs of War that followed two years later. It may take a full hour for the mission to get underway, but don’t go thinking that’s a criticism. The set-up, recruitment, and training sequences (complete with a standard barking sergeant major whose methods appear to involve little more than running in a circle and falling down in the dust) help build characterization and momentum. Once in Africa it’s got the sort of things we can all cheer, such as bazookas, double crosses, screaming men set ablaze, those cool silenced pistols, wholesale slaughter, the odd crossbow bolt through a neck, and cyanide gas that kills you in less than a second. In particular, a set piece involving a stalled truck on a stone bridge and a bouncing bomb is gripping.
Performances are good, with that Welsh firebrand Burton opting for charisma and some pithy putdowns over vigour. For as he’d shown in 1974’s delightfully nasty The Klansman, he was far too weakened by the ol’ demon drink to do any tough guy stuff. Here it’s noticeable that he’s supposed to be a crack soldier but about the most energetic thing he does is chuck a grenade. OK, there is a one-second shot of him running, but in the next scene, he’s back to sitting on his arse with a half-drunk pint of beer. Elsewhere, Harris tries to provide the movie’s heart, which is a bit tricky as he’s saddled with an Annoying Kid, while Moore puts in a radically different turn from his usual amiable amblings by opting to smoke cigars.
Director McLaglen, who repeated his strange fondness for combining action and over the hill stars in rotten pics such as North Sea Hijack, Breakthrough and The Sea Wolves, sometimes reaches for meatier themes. Hence, we get to hear about the morality of the mercenary life and the politics of the troubled continent, but this sort of pontificating isn’t his strength. Just watch the way he depicts bone-deep racism as a malady that can be cured by a chat or two with an intelligent, articulate black man.
I must admit, I prefer Wild Geese’s subtext of how men kick against turning into old farts. There’s a suggestion that marriage and domestication are a betrayal of their true nature. Is there anything glummer than battle-hardened veterans spending their weekends pruning rose bushes, trying to keep the other half on side, making their living as a jaded plumber or looking forward to hanging out with their boarding school-educated posh kid? Wild Geese implies that such men actually yearn to be forever in combat snuffing out life, no matter how decrepit they get. Or, as one tubby character pushing fifty says: “I just like to fight with weapons or without.” I guess it’s a once bitten, never shy kind of thing.
Dulce et Decorum Est…? Well, these mercenaries may not be dying for their country, but it’s still jolly good fun watching them lust after money and calamity-filled adventure.
The latest, none too subtle installment of Dave Franklin’s Ice Dog Movie Guide is out now in paperback and e-book.
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