2023-07-01 10:37:07
On the occasion of the increasing media presence of the Russian “Wagner” militia, we take a look at how mercenary fighters are portrayed in cinema.
“They train like dogs, they fly like birds, they fight like jackals”… Thus, the trailer for the British action movie The Wild Geese (1978, Andrew MacLaughlin) pays tribute to its main characters. As the film’s English poster tells us, they are “accident soldiers” and “modern knights”. But is the paraphrase of these flowery phrases still appropriate to announce the film itself today? The matter is subject to doubt and question, following all, we are talking regarding a battalion of white mercenaries operating in Africa.
In real life and in the news, the term “mercenaries” tends not to evoke positive images and impressions. Not only since the emergence of the Wagner Group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin as an agent and dirty arm of the Putin regime in Ukraine, Africa, Syria and elsewhere; Before finally turning a sword in the side of the Russian regime itself. Although the word’s etymological difference with regular soldier is slight (the two terms depend on the pay professionals of war received for their services), a mercenary is generally assumed to have a higher degree of voluntarism. It is regarding a person who is a professional fighting and killing, full time (almost) on his own, without public mobilization, social pressure or ideological motives. This is frightening to many in a society weaned on war.
On the other hand, in cinema, the mercenary character has always had an aura of gruff and rough liberation, comparable to that of a pirate. Of course, there are paid villains in the history of cinema, but there are also many private soldiers whose portrayal and presentation on screen as “anti-heroes” has a romantic touch that strengthens their relationship with the audience. With the help of these, the American war cinema was able to survive the time of student protests and discontent over the Vietnam War, by presenting the audience with a “realistic” battlefield that is supposed to be devoid of any flashiness. The most prominent pioneer of this approach was The Dirty Dozen (1967, Robert Aldrich), regarding a suicide squad of 12 American military prisoners who are unleashed to deal with the Nazis during World War II, with a plot revolving around their infiltration of an occupied French fortress under It is heavily guarded and killed by Nazi officers who are vacationing there. The soldiers agree to the mission, eager to see their sentences commuted, as most face death sentences for a variety of violent offences.
The Magnificent Seven (1960, John Sturgess)
Like all pioneers in their field, the film sets out one of the basic tenets of mercenary films: the protagonists may be heartless “hounds”, but the real villains are always others. In the case of the Wild Geese, for example, it was an English banker who ordered them to travel to Africa to pave the way for his greed for profit. While the main mission of the mercenaries is to save an African president from execution, with the failure of the mission later, the banker refuses to send help, and thus the mercenaries somehow turn into heroes struggling to survive.
In this cinematic genre (and each genre has its own myths and codes), the mercenaries are subsumed by the free-spirited guerrillas and outlaws of Western classics such as “The Magnificent Seven” (1960, John Sturgess), whose protagonists, in turn, are inspired by wandering warriors. From The Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa): They have no illusions or utopias, they are not subject to anyone; This is precisely why they have been able to develop something like a moral code of honor that distinguishes them from other murderers and fighters.
This myth has resonated uninterruptedly in Anglo-American popular culture ever since, from The A-Team (2010, Joe Carnan) to The Expendables. Sometimes the mercenaries work together, then once more as lone wolves. The last model might include “Rambo” (Sylvester Stallone), especially in the second and fourth parts of the film series. They usually end up in unstable emerging countries, where they are supposed to “clean up” or free prisoners or intervene in power struggles; Hence, a touch of colonial romanticism is often present in these narratives.
Now there’s a younger, more relevant representation we can see of this heroic archetype gracing billboards: Tyler Rake, the character from the Marvel universe played by Chris Hemsworth in Extraction 1 and 2. He is also an exemplary “soldier of chance” with a noble mind and good intentions.
Even superhero cinema has mercenary killers in its cast. In the world of “Marvel” there is the famous tyrant from the movie Deadpool (two parts), known as the “joke mercenary” (or Merc with a mouth in English). In the DC universe, there’s an entire contingent in the Suicide Squad series that’s unabashedly inspired by the “Bad Dozen” and the same way a supervillain army of convicted criminals is built.
European films have relatively more inclusive and diverse views of mercenaries, including films of past periods and eras – for example, Flesh + Blood (1985, Paul Verhoeven) starring Rutger Hauer, which is set in the European Middle Ages around A mercenary takes revenge on his former client, who belongs to a noble family. Or, more recently, as in the Austrian horror Razzennest Nest (2022, Johannes Grinzfurthener), where torrential incursions from the Thirty Years’ War wreak havoc as a covert documentary is being finalized. Things are even more heroic in the historical Czech epic Medieval (2022, Petr Yekel), regarding the Czech icon and warlord Jan Žižka who defeats the armies of the Teutonic Order and the Holy Roman Empire during the 14th century.
On the other hand, the French Foreign Legion, on the border between mercenaries and regular soldiers, comes to wield a strange charm, not least on artistic filmmakers such as French Claire Deny (“Beautiful Work” / Beau Travail, 2001), or her German colleague Helena Wittmann (“Flowers”). Human Flesh / Human Flowers of Flesh 2022. In both films, a remarkable approach and treatment of the world of the Foreign Legion, its legacy and history, the first taking place in Djibouti and the other in the Mediterranean, reaching Algeria, the historical headquarters of the Legion.
As for documentaries and documentaries, films that approach the issue of mercenaries in a documentary manner are still rare. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the movie “Warheads” (1992, Romuald Karmakar), which caused controversy at the time of its release. The film features extensive interviews with two soldiers of the Foreign Legion, one in a paramilitary training camp in French Guiana, and the other during the 1991 Croatian Civil War. Director Romuald Karmakar makes no moral judgment and is primarily concerned with the ethics of war. Armed forces become surrogate families with morals of their own. In his later work he continued to focus on the perpetrators rather than the victims, as in The Deathmaker and The Himmler Project.
Finally, you can also watch the movie “The Smiling Man(1966, Walter Heinofsky and Gerhard Schumann) available on YouTube. An East German film that presents a disturbing conversation with a man involved as a mercenary in suppressing uprisings in the Congo during the 1960s. The difference between the time of the German film and what it is doing today may seem big. “Wagner” mercenaries in Syria, Africa and Ukraine, but the horrors and crimes are the same, and perhaps more horrific.
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