An Honest Cause

VERY FEW CONTEMPORARY artists share the classical bias that warfare is noble. Slaughterhouse Five. Why Are We In Vietnam?, Apocalypse Now--the realization is dawning that saturation bombing means blowing up every village in a province designated "strategic" by a Pentagon flunkie, and that anti-personnel devices are grenades filled with steel pins designed expressly to rip humans apart. No Thermopylae for us not even any Chateaux Thierry. We read about My Lai when we were nine or ten, and it will take more than the Iranian crisis to make us forget that the ditches in that small Asian town were filled with civilians, with children.

Although the literary world is picking up on the "war is hell" notion, the writers and the directors are not offering many solutions.

They could point in three different directions--perhaps war exists because that's the way the world is, and we might as well go on killing for honor or ideology or money. Not the most sensible conclusion, especially in a nuclear age, but it seems to be the standard operating philosophy for most countries, including our own. Or, we could dismiss war as unthinkable and retreat into an eyes-closed pacifism, content with the status quo if only it means no one will die.

Finally, we could realize fully the horror of the AK-47 and recognize as well the horror of oppression. And, when the gut-turning indignity of slavery makes living worthless, we would fight. Frederick Forsyth took this last premise, twisted it slightly, and turned it into a novel; now John Irvin has turned the book into a near-flawless movie.

Neither Forsyth nor Irvin are especially political. Their expertise is more of the blood and guts, shocking camera angle variety. But in the course of a simple thriller, they have hit on a morality play which presents the rational and the emotional arguments for revolution.

Which is not to say that Dogs of War is about politics--Americans do not go to movies about politics. Instead, the camera follows one initially very apolitical character, Jamie Shannon. First he is on an airfield (labelled "Central America"), departing with his mercenary band after an unnamed mission. He arrives in New York, is nice to a small child, and then flies off to the West African state of Zangaro, modelled loosely on Uganda. He is doing reconaissance for a big, unidentified, corporate interest which wants to make sure Zangaro's repressive regime is stable so it can start carting off the nation's platinum at low prices. (For further references, see "Middle East--Oil").

Shannon--played as the stoic strong man in the Sly Stallone mold by Chris Walken--pretends he is in Zangaro to photograph birds. The ruler's men may be brutish, but they're no dummies, and Shannon gets the bejesus kicked out of him before he is deported. Back in New York, multinational enterprise knocks on his door again, this time to ask if he might not enjoy returning to Zangaro and overthrowing the government. And, of course, replacing it with a regime equally bad but tied more closely to the free world's engines of capitalist progress.

Most of the rest of the movie is spent in Paris, where much time is spent procuring mortars and sealing them inside oil drums. There is also occasion for a couple of interesting minor subplots which end in a pair of murders. All the arms stowed away, Shannon and company--a small international band of warriors-for-pay bound by shared danger, shared skill, and shared thirst for beer--set sail aboard a trawler for Zangaro. They land late at night, eliminate a sentry or two, and then storm a garrison in a violent display of pyrotechnics. Shortly afterwards, justice triumphs--to say more would give the ending away, and probably reintroduce this question of politics.

Dogs of War moves at a breakneck pace, never pausing at one scene for more than a minute or two. The transitions are choppy, but they are that way on purpose, and as a dramatic device, they work magnificently. A light goes off in one room; seconds later, when it comes on in another, a dead man stares you in the face. And the special effects, from the bloody makeup to the exploding mortars, are outstanding. Joe Lombardi, who did the effects for Apocalypse Now, says Dogs of War was a trickier assignment. "The overall explosions on Apocalypse may have been bigger," he explains cheerfully, adding, "but in Dogs we were working in confined spaces."

ALMOST ALL the acting is top-notch. No one tries for an Academy Award, and that's the way it should be in a film whose message is in the plot, not in individual subtleties. Paul Freeman, Jean-Francois Stevenin, and Tom Berenger play Shannon's mates. Each is tough, gutsy, and grittily charming. There are next to no actesses in the film; the one love scene takes about 45 seconds. Though he plays another stock character--the hard-drinking British journalist--Colin Blakely turns in an entertaining stiff-upper-lip performance, which is matched by Hugh Millais' portrayal of Simon Endean, Mr. International Capital. "But this presidency has been all bought and paid for," he protests at the movie's end, as he stands impeccably dressed in a sea of blood and gore.

Mercenaries are the rage these days-"Soldier of Fortune" magazine sells 250,000 copies every month to readers eager to know what type of bullet will do the most damage, how they can defend against (read "kill") intruders, and how they can obtain that hit record, "War Songs of the Third Reich" (simply by mailing a lot of money to somewhere in the Midwest). The magazine's classified ads prove that this is more than show--people beg for assignments ("Central America preferred, but will go anywhere"). Dogs of War will appeal immensely to this crew. They will see exciting new weapons--the XM-18, a cross between a cannon and an eggbeater--and all the other high priced assault technology that they can now only gaze at in the magazines. Jamie Shannon, too, may seen their type of man, a tough bastard who can take pain and dish it out, who can deal with things.

THOSE WHO INTERPRET this movie as glorifying mercenaries have missed the point, but their confusion underscores one other theme. Mercenary swagger, the strut of a man loaded down with a gun and with the realization that he is running through the night toward his own death, is very close, almost identical, to the swagger of a revolutionary. Both are tough men; both live too near death to allow for love and compassion, unless it is the kind of love that takes half an hour. When Americans talk about "those barbaric Iranians (North Vietnamese, Chinese, Nicaraguans)," they mean the excess, the cruelty that grows inside men and women tough enough to throw off oppression. Dogs of War admits that cruelty and confesses the crimes that accompany the fight for dignity. But it shows even as buildings blaze and babies scream, that war can be worthwhile as long as the cause is honest.