As the seventies rolled on, one sub-genre of the war movie that seemed to be getting ever more dated was the man-on-a-mission movie that often saw an all-star cast thrown together to thwart the Nazis in various do or die scenarios. However, as the days of World War II got ever further in the rear view mirror, filmmakers strove to find other conflicts to take advantage of and thanks to the various unpleasant things that were occurring in Africa at the time, The Wild Geese took flight.
However, a quick glance at the cast list revealed that this would be no crack troop of spring chickens parachuting into certain death to attempt to make the world a slightly better place – no, this was a thrown together battalion of ruddy faced “fortysomethings” lead by a trio of acting legends that barely had a functioning liver between the three of them. Whether you feel it was a sweaty, “has-been” version of the man on a mission film, or a trial run for an Expendables movie with a shocking cholesterol intake, The Wild Geese proves to be something of a memorable experience for various reasons.
Alcohol guzzling mercenary Allen Faulkner has been hired by merchant banker (not rhyming slang) Sir Edward Matheson to mount an unsanctioned mission into Africa to rescue the imprisoned President Julius Limbani of a southern nation in order to reinstate him to his former position and oust the general who has him slated for execution.
After accepting the job, Allen starts shopping around for a small army to technically invade a warring nation and he starts off with skilled tactician and struggling single father, Captain Rafer Janders and then moves on to roguish pilot turned smuggler Lieutenant Shawn Flynn after clearing up a little problem he has with the Mafia.
Soon, the recruits are flying in as Allen not only recruits men to fight, but he brings in men to train these men to get them up to speed for their gruelling mission, but after the date is suddenly brought forward, they have to make do with what they have and parachute the fifty or so mercenaries in regardless of their physical state. However, after the first part of the plan goes off without a hitch, some rather worrying speedbumps crop up to slow their rather flawless roll. For a start, they’re stabbed in the back by the merchant banker (now definitely rhyming slang) pulling the plug on the mission literally at the point where they were about to leap on the plane and come home and stranding all of them, plus Limbani in decidedly hostile territory and Janders figures out the only shot they have is to travel to Limbani’s people, proof to them that he’s still alive and start a civil war to get back at Matheson at the very least.
However, Lambani’s health isn’t looking too good after his extended stay in captivity and with enemy troops closing in from all angles, can the Wild Geese manage to fly their way to safety?
I can’t say for sure how The Wild Geese played back in 1978 (primarily because I was 2), but while I suspect that it’s puffy faced heroics and rather casual approach to crippling alcohol addiction may have suited it well, these days it looks very much like someone tried to make a boy’s own war adventure and packed full of nicotine stained teeth and cirrhosis suffering old men. Sure, plenty of actors nowadays plunge into action heavy roles as they plough into their 40s and 50s, but they’re usually powered by strict training routines and unbearably strict diets – these guys look like they start their day knocking back endless whiskeys and then demolishing a twenty pack of fags which kind of gives the movie the feel of playing like Mid-Life Crisis: The Movie.
On top of that, director Andrew V. McLaglen makes some rather curious decisions in his presentation. I’m not sure who had final say on having a Maurice Binder/James Bond title sequence open the film but I have to say that replacing dancing naked women and random day-glo pistols with Joan Armatrading singing over images of oppressed African people and geese was certainly was a choice… Elsewhere, the film is more than willing to have its impossibly grizzled leads play to type whether it makes sense or not – for example if Roger Moore’s typically smarmy Shawn is supposed to embarking on a stealth mission, why on earth is his constantly chomping on a gargantuan stogie that looks like you could smell it an entire continent away? Why is Richard Harris allowed to bellow in a truly bizarre American accent when he infiltrates a London casino and why would the movie riff on Richard Burton’s actual alcohol issue when we watch him grab a glass of spirits two-handed and glup it down with the sound of Fry from Futurama demolishing a can of Slurm?
However, while a lot of it may seem racially and politically clunky – Hardy Krüger’s bigoted South African and Winston Ntshona’s battered President seemingly solve racism after a single chat – there’s actually something ruggedly amusing about watching this gaggle of flush faced gentlemen reliving their glory days even if their sciatica nerves seem to be the biggest threat.
The main reason is that it’s just frankly impossible to stick Burton, Harris and Moore together in a film and have it not be absurdly watchable and when you add to that a ripe bunch of familiar, where-have-I-seen-them-before, type faces in the supporting cast, you find yourself weirdly drawn in despite Kenneth Griffith’s openly gay medic making endless comments about “beautiful bums”. Moore seems to be enjoying chewing on those dry asides as much as he’s enjoying chewing on those cigars, Burton relishes playing the tough leader who refuses to see his brave boys suffer (although three point blank shots to the head of a dying colleague seems a little extreme) and Harris somehow manages to actually add some pathos to this thing due to his subplot of being a loving single father to what seems the poshest boy on earth.
Like most men in a mission movies, The Wild Geese goes a bit lavish on the running time as it goes into great detail when it comes to the recruitment, training and mission, but as we round the final bend and the Geese’s numbers start rapidly dropping, you’ll bound to accidently utter the words “Ah no, not that guy!” a least once when someone hits the dirt for the final time.
While there are far better war movies featuring teams facing insurmountable odds, the sense that the smell of booze and stale Pall Malls is wafting through the screen to the rat-ta-tat of enthusiastic machine gun fire is strangely reassuring. And let’s be honest, how can you truly hate a film that has an actual, legendary booze hound state in character that his liver has to be buried separately with honours?
Honk if you love The Wild Geese.
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