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The Wild Geese: 30 Years On
Time Out looks back at Andrew V. McLaglen's 1978 Film 'The Wild Geese', 30 years after its original release

It concerned a band of elderly mercenaries sent to the colonies to shoot the place up, and played like a hamstrung geo-political ‘Blues Brothers’. Richards Burton and Harris were charged with reassembling the band, only here, ‘the band’ is a gaggle of gin-soaked squaddies who’ve found that the quiet life of the old country doesn’t quite hit the spot when it comes to mayhem and rapine.

At the behest of Stewart Granger’s saturnine copper magnate, their mission is to spring a democratically elected leader from the clutches of a hated despot, restoring to power what every right-thinking global mining conglomerate wants – an incorruptible, independently minded popular nationalist sitting atop vast mineral assets.

Far, far away from the movie, in the real world, Burton’s clipped-toned booze-hound, Colonel Faulkner would have smelled a rat even with that cigar-addled hooter, spraying his host with Courvoisier and bellowing, ‘what the hell kind of business model is that?’. Here, however, he sees a chance to get some guilt-free trigger action, and the lads pack off to a generic dusty African hellhole, where some of the natives will be noble, but most will be background artists who will look at the camera or scratch their heads just when they’re supposed to have been turned into a human piñata in a hail of bullets.

The inevitable chumming-up of Granger and the bad guys leaves ‘The Wild Geese’ (for it is they) out on a limb and ratchets up the movie’s limp drama. But, perhaps more importantly, it gives the makers a great Get Out Of Despotic Jail Free card; they pull off the seemingly impossible task of telling a story about white mercenaries in '70s Africa without resorting to politics. Yes, there’s a daliance in cramming Hardy Krüger’s bluff (read: wildly racist) Afrikaaner into a ‘Defiant Ones’ set-up with Winston Ntshona’s two-dimensional pan-African mouthpiece, but the political complexity on show is more ‘Red Scorpion’ than ‘Reds’.

The subject matter was hardly unique: British and South African veterans were for hire across Africa in the '70s, and two years later in 1980, John Irvin’s superior ‘The Dogs of War’ would plough a similarly dodgy furrow but with the energy and unflinching eye to carry it off.

What’s extraordinary about ‘The Wild Geese’ is the fact that it’s remembered at all. The three leads – Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore – have all starred in cinematic non-sequiturs now mercifully buried or misremembered (see Moore’s ‘That Lucky Touch’, Burton‘s ‘Massacre in Rome’ or Harris’s ‘Orca’).

Yet ‘The Wild Geese’ retains a following. Granted, it’s mostly of men on their third, now pseudonomynous application to the TA, but a following nevertheless. The Action Man poster art has been re-interpreted for countless dubious blast-fests (‘Wild Force’ anyone?) and Joan Armatrading’s theme blazed the trail for Berlin, showing that slow-mo violence and soaring soft-rock balladry were queasily compatible bedfellows.

And now the kids who first saw ' 'Geese' on pirate VHS when they were 13 have grown up and are listening to the clamour for a remake hopefully starring Ray Winstone or Daniel Craig or Danny Dyer.

'The problem is not that we were once there, it’s that we aren’t anymore’, Boris Johnson once wrote of Africa’s torment in The Spectator. Three decades on and undeterred by 'Tears Of The Sun ', the word in London’s murky film industry shebeens is that its time to go back to where it all began: the Geese must fly again.

Author: Paul Fairclough

stevie boy

a good swashbuckling film. I would disagree that the Dogs of War is superior.

wadsy

I read that Stephen Boyd was pencilled in for a significant role in this film

but tragically he died (heart attack) before production. It would have been

a major comeback for him after a few lean years!

batman

I take it Paul Fairclough is not a fan of the film. I agre with stevieboy, the film is a good old fashioned swashbuckling adventure .... a kind of Brit western if you like. I also do not think The Dogs of War is a better film ... it is a good film but it is different, not better.

A remake would be a strange animal in the 21st Century, but with a bit of plot tinkering (Faulkner goes to get rid of Mugabe perhaps) and the right cast the Geese may yet fly again!

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

batman

Was it you wadsy who, in the alternative Bond thread, said SB would have made a good 007? I meant to say at the time I could see him doing that role. I wonder if it was the Sean Finn (Sir Rog) role he was appoached to do in TWG?

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

wadsy

It was a Sgt Major he was supposed to play, the Jack Watson part.

He looked very ill in his later roles as a result of contracting hepititis B.

He was a shadow of the handsome actor he'd been just a few years

earlier. Apparently it was the strenuous workouts he was putting himself

through to get fit for the part in the film that contributed to his early death.

A tragedy. I thought he was a terrific actor!!

batman

Me too.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Azanti

Sorry I have to disagree with Mr Fairclough on nearly every point he has made.

I also never applied to join nor would I wish to, the T.A or any other branch of the armed services.

No doubt the critic who chooses to critcise the choice of slow motion with music (There was no slow motion in Wild Geese by the way) would triumph Sam Peckinpah for inventing it.

The subject matter may well have been hardly unique, especially on reflection in the current context, however at the time films being made set in Africa were not a dime a dozen, with only a handful being made on this kind of subject and setting between 1970 and 1980.

It is a film of its time and as others have stated is a 'jolly good romp' it survives the test of time because it has a good script, a good cast and you care about the characters. I am sure that Harris, Burton and Moore are not alone in the acting world in having taken work for pay, something that can't be used as a justification to back up what I would call a non-sequiturs argument.

Calling the Dogs Of War superior is questionable at best, it is inferior in almost every aspect and subscribes far moreso to the theories that are being advanced here.

Wild Geese was never intended to be a broad political statement - while it does touch on some of the issues the continent was facing at the time, it does not ultimate explore them. The films brief was clearly to deliver an action filled romp, and it does so.

If they do, do a remake (And I am not clamouring to see that happen) then no doubt it will refelect the context of modern times and politics and if it is a more serious film, then it would do well to do so.

Personally I would be less interested in seeing that, than a film about characters that I care about. Films such as The Last King Of Scotland, Cry Freedom, Pieces Of April etc (all brilliant films) have this far more centered in their remit.

The comparison of Joan Armatrading leaving some kind of footprint fo future music videos to follow, is well, I am sorry, pure b@lls@@t. The song appears on the opening and closing credits of the movie, not during some elongated video montage sequence in the middle with shots of sunsets and people riding motorbikes while sporting designer labels.

You could mount an equal argument that the bond movies started a similar trend with the likes of Shirley Bassey had this been the case. They to had an opening credit sequence with strong female vocals and titles by Maurice Bender. It certainly did not start with Wild Geese.

earlb

Perhaps they could introduce a dog called 'Whitey' or would that be racist?

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

homeguard

Technically brilliant movie as far as the military equipment went, and what a heartbreaking ending? With most of the principals dead, it had more lessons to white involvement in Africa buried in the plot than were obvious at first. Can you really see Ray Winston doing any of the parts justice in a re-make? They'll be getting Tom Cruise in next! I loved it, as an ex-regular soldier of course.
Regards,
HG

Windthrop

Have read that both Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum were nearly cast

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

dpgmel

I didn;t know that, makes his death even more of a tragedy.

stevie boy

excellent post

NappieB

I was honoured to accompany a real life colleague of THE WILD GEESE on a road trip through early 70s Africa.

DOGS OF WAR is a good movie, but lacks the authenticity, realism and the attention to detail. Other good movies in the genre are: BLOOD DIAMOND (not British, but could be generic in its overall assessment of wars in Africa) and another recent offering that starred Nicholas Cage as an arms dealer (title escapes me, but it's circa 2005 and also not British).

Spend a few years in the countries of Africa and then give an opinion!!

"The future is yet to come" - George W. Bush

m35541

My favourite mercenary movie is the Rod Taylor film Dark of the Sun/The Mercenaries co-starring Jim Brown, Yvette Mimieux and Kenneth More. That has a great Maurice Jarre score.