The Dogs of War

It demonstrates the kind of intelligence and thought one doesn't often find in a movie aimed at the action-adventure crowd. This is evident as much in what the film doesn't do and say as in what is actually seen on the screen.

A crisp, tough-minded action film about an international group of mercenaries who stage a coup in a small, decaying West African country run by an Idi Amin-Papa Doc-style despot. The casting of Christopher Walken as Shannon, the leader of the group, gives the film the fuse it needs.

The Dogs of War [from Frederick Forsyth's novel] is an intelligent and occasionally forceful treatment of a provocative but little-examined theme, that of mercenary warrior involvement in the overthrow of a corrupt black African dictatorship. Film fails to really get at the heart of the whys and hows of mercenary life, and also rejects the idea of generating any sense of camaraderie among the men.

he Dogs of War doesn't begin to deal with the moral complexity it promises: it keeps settling for easy, melodramatic solutions. Irvin is obviously a gifted storyteller, but he's shackled with the wrong story: it's a shame he couldn't have scrapped more of Forsyth's original plot and made a real movie about mercenaries and the Third World. [23 Feb 1981, p.61]

The Dogs of War can be recommended only as a desperate snack for rabid tastes.

Ten out of ten to Colin Blakely for his cameo (as an itinerant o'booze), but otherwise this is just another weary hack job from a rootless British film industry in decline.

Exceedingly well-shot (by Jack Cardiff) action film that will evaporate from the memory shortly after the end credits roll.