{"id":1425,"date":"2024-07-30T16:07:53","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T16:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:41:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:41:19","slug":"the-dogs-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/30\/the-dogs-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dogs of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Dogs of War <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 119 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence including torture)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Irvin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gary DeVore and George Malko\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Geoffrey Burgon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jack Cardiff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 13, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais, Paul Freeman, Jean Francois Stevenin, Robert Urquhart, Maggie Scott, Winston Ntshona, Kelvin Thomas, JoBeth Williams, Ed O’Neill.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $5.4M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Dogs of War<\/strong> is that rare breed of action movie that has more on its mind than shooting and blowing stuff up. While it features plenty of both, it also delves into the private life of its hero. His name is Jamie Shannon. He\u2019s a mercenary. When he\u2019s not off fighting somebody else\u2019s war in some God forsaken part of the world, he leads a bleak existence. He lives alone in a depressing apartment in New York. The TV is always on; presumably, so he feels less alone. He\u2019s godfather to a baby whose mother asks him to never come around. His only friend is a young African-American boy whose name he doesn\u2019t even know. According to his doctor, he\u2019s taken several years off the back end of his life due to the many injuries and diseases he sustained due to his profession. When you think about it, Shannon has nothing to lose putting his life on the line as a soldier-for-hire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Shannon, played to perfection by Christopher Walken (The Deer Hunter), is visited by British businessman Endean (Millais, Images) with a business proposal. He wants Shannon to go on a reconnaissance mission to the small fictional African country of Zangaro. He has interests there and wants information regarding the stability of the government under the current leader, brutal dictator General Kimba. Is there any chance of a coup? Posing as a photographer for a nature magazine, Shannon goes looking around Zangaro, immediately attracting the attention of the local police. He\u2019s subsequently arrested, beaten and tortured before being deported back to America.<\/p>\n

\u00a0After a period of contemplating retirement, during which he tries to patch things up with his ex-wife Jessie (Williams, Poltergeist), he decides to accept an offer from Endean to return to Zangaro and forcibly remove Kimba from power. The businessman intends to replace Kimba with a puppet ruler willing to cut a deal with his company. Shannon assembles his team- Drew (Berenger, The Big Chill), Derek (Freeman, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Michel (Stevenin, Victory)- for one last mission.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Interesting characters show up throughout The Dogs of War<\/strong> like BBC reporter North (Blakely, A Man for All Seasons) filming a documentary in Zangaro, Gabrielle (Scott), a beautiful woman hired to show Shannon around and Dr. Okoye (Ntshona, The Wild Geese), a former political opponent of Kimba\u2019s who\u2019s been imprisoned since the general came into power. They factor into the plot in ways I won\u2019t reveal here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What separates The Dogs of War <\/strong>from other macho actioners with their monosyllabic heroes is Shannon. Here\u2019s a man who\u2019s clearly intelligent. He\u2019s not just a mindless killing machine capable of taking down an entire enemy army single-handedly. He has depth and dimension. There\u2019s a lot going on beneath the surface. If only the movie let us in on it. It shows us his life without telling us what he\u2019s thinking at any given moment. Why does he do what he does? Is he motivated by a moral code or just money? The questions remain unanswered. However, I think the movie\u2019s refusal to allow us to gain a better understanding of Shannon is intentional. His line of work requires secrecy. He\u2019s used to keeping things close to the chest. By opening up to somebody, he\u2019d be betraying the central rule of his profession. It\u2019s a tricky character to write and only an actor of Walken\u2019s caliber could pull it off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Walken delivers one of his finest performances in The Dogs of War <\/strong>even though it’s a bit strange seeing him play the hero instead of the unhinged villain. His Jamie Shannon is a smart, careful man who meticulously plans every step of his mission. The scenes of him and his men wheeling and dealing with shady types for weapons, ammo and passage into Zangaro are as compelling as the action-packed climax is exciting. Shannon\u2019s team, along with a group of Zangaron exiles trained as soldiers, sneak in under the cover of darkness to carry out their mission. It\u2019s a solid pay-off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Based on the best-selling novel by Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War <\/strong>is the type of action movie that rarely gets made anymore. The writers assume intelligence on the part of the audience by giving them a complex (but not convoluted) plot involving international politics and corporate greed. Director John Irvin (Raw Deal), for the most part, keeps it moving along at a decent clip without sacrificing plot development. True, it\u2019s somewhat lacking in character development but it makes sense in context. We\u2019re talking about macho soldiers-for-hire in \u201981. They\u2019re men of action not words. The closest we get to knowing somebody other than Shannon is Drew who we learn has a wife and baby (Shannon\u2019s aforementioned godchild).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Over the past 40 years, The Dogs of War<\/strong> has gotten lost amongst all the mindless action flicks, but it’s one worth rediscovering. It\u2019s intelligently written, smartly directed and convincingly acted especially by Walken. It has a few cool scenes like when the guys test their weapons en route to Zangaro. That grenade launcher is a beautifully bad ass piece of weaponry. I hope it\u2019s not too sexist to say The Dogs of War<\/strong> is a total guy\u2019s movie. My dad took me to see it when I was 13. I noticed there weren\u2019t ANY women in the audience. With only two significant female characters, I can see why they were all in the adjacent theater watching Ordinary People.\"\"<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dogs of War (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 United Artists\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 119 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, strong violence including torture)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Irvin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Gary DeVore and George Malko\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Geoffrey Burgon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jack Cardiff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 13, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais, Paul Freeman, Jean Francois Stevenin, Robert Urquhart, Maggie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-treasures","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-Dogs-of-War-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2005,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions\/2005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}