The outrageously ridiculous, instinctively reactionary Wild Geese take arthritic flight once again in this re-release of the 1978 action adventure from director Andrew McLaglen, featuring the by-then-rather-superannuated stars Richard Harris, Richard Burton and mid-Bond Roger Moore. All of these senior gentlemen are in military berets, some smoking rakish cigars – but looking as if they are wearing gentlemen’s support girdles under their camo to keep them upright, and giving the impression they would be happier taking a long lunch at Langan’s Brasserie in London’s West End.
There’s an outrageous “parachute training” sequence in which we are expected to believe that Roger Moore has jumped from a height, hit the ground and then got up. Never was a stunt double more obviously needed, with Rodge raising a wry eyebrow of complaint afterwards as the drill sergeant yells at him: “You are jumping from an aeroplane not a whorehouse window!”
In spirit, it’s one of the last of the second world war boy’s-own adventure movies; only this is part of the strange 1970s fetish for mercenary soldiers in Africa, a craze kicked off by Frederick Forsyth’s bestseller The Dogs of War. The real-life mercenary “Mad” Mike Hoare is credited as a consultant on an entirely absurd fantasy about our three amigos, who are recruited by sinister banker Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Grainger) to move against the military regime in a central African country called Zembala (as opposed to, say, the country President Trump called “Nambia”). The plan is to restore liberal black president Julius Limbani (Winston Ntshona) because he will supposedly be more sympathetic to Sir Edward’s copper mining interests.
Hardy Krüger plays a South African mercenary who uses the odious Afrikaans k-word to describe Limbani – but the pair have a kind of bromance in the film which involves Limbani praising white people to the skies. John Kani has a small role as one of their African soldiers, while Frank Finlay has a spirited cameo as an Irish priest who despises them but helps out in the end. In theory, Burton et al believe they are more or less on the side of the angels; it all ends in chaos, but our heroes finally get their revenge, though the rather casual cynicism dates this film very considerably.
