Johnny Mad Dog

Having heard so much about this film...i have to say that the outcome was quite disappointing, considering that the actors were child soldiers themselves. How I wished they could have done more to give viewers more intrinsic detail on a subject rarely explored by films. There is nothing wrong with the acting, as the 'actors' were basically playing themselves with ease. The problem in the movie is that visibility is restricted - we see the same scenario over and over again, only difference is they were in difference locations. Further investigation in other aspects of child soldiering could have easily been filmed (given the child soldiers' participation in this movie) but nothing was being done.

the other reviewer bellow sums everything up pretty much as i would do overall. i just have to add that i like this much more then "city of God" mostly because there is no over-the-top acting here and this is much more expressive from a realistic point of view. also the 2 or 3 war scenes are also very raw with realistic common sense military tactics.

but the strength of this movie comes from its subject matter and from ALL the actors. watching this one realizes that there is no need for drama classes to become an "actor" if you were able to "play" the designed "role" beforehand...hands down to ALL the actors here(both girls and boys). the dramatization and the conclusion also stands out as well as all those little details abundant in many scenes.the dialogues are very raw and used in good realistic measure.

one warning to the viewer: the language spoken is an English African dialect, so you might have a need for a subtitled version. subtitles are already available for it on the net.

Any film about child soldiers is going to be hard to watch and also hard to review. As a depiction of the horror of war and the 'normalisation' of barbarity that can be instilled into children, it is a triumph. It was intensely bleak from start to finish with no solace. How could it be anything else? If you want to try and get inside the minds of child soldiers and maybe even try and comprehend their actions, then yes do watch this film. If you want your films to have some entertainment value, then avoid. I'm struggling to give it a score out of ten as I didn't enjoy it at all. Paradoxically, however, it was a must watch.

I've been drawn to Johnny Mad Dog by the fact that Mathieu Kassovitz was one of the producers. Despite his escapades with Hollywood he was able to amass a fine body of work, so i was curious what he got involved with this time.

I saw this movie as a powerful docudrama that shows the realities of a prolonged civil war in Subsaharan Africa. It follows the protagonists in a cold, almost detached, matter-of-fact way. When you give weapons to kids life becomes a simple but deadly game. The movie offers no answers, since it seems there are no answers. In this sense it is similar to Kassovitz's movie Hate (1995).

But the strongest message is that this topic has been known for decades. As if the civil wars in Africa were a part of local folklore and there is nothing to be done about it.

In an unknown African country, Johnny Mad Dog (Christophe Minie), possibly 14-15 years old, leads a group of young child militia. After the successful infiltration of a TV station, who they believe support the President, they march on to try and capture the capital city. They rape, murder and destroy their way through the city, with scant regard for the cause they're fighting for or the cities inhabitants. Meanwhile, Laokole (Daisy Victoria Vandy), a young girl around Johnny's age, tries to survive with her younger brother and her wounded, legless father.

Shot with a documentary-like realism, director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire employed an unknown cast, many of which are actual former child soldiers. We are shown in detail how they are taken from their families and have hatred drilled into them by their colonel, who spouts his motto "you don't want to die, don't be born." It's a savage story set in a savage landscape, and, in the central storyline, we are not allowed the comfort of having any sympathetic characters. There are moments of black comedy - at the beginning we see one of the soldiers loot a victims house and put on a wedding dress, which he wears for the majority of the film, and No Good Advice (Dagbeth Tweh) steals a pig from a victim and stubbornly struggles to carry it on his shoulders. They are clever devices that make the film all the more terrifying and almost unbelievable.

The cast are superb to the point where I often forgot I was watching a film, and instead was watching a beautifully filmed documentary. As Johnny, Minie is dead-eyed and stoic, with only fleeting glimpses of a heart beating beneath his cold exterior. He is simply doing what he has been brought up believing, that what he and his crew are doing is revolutionary. They have scant regard for their own lives, being convinced from a young age that bullets won't hurt them, and their bodies jacked-up with alcohol and cocaine. As the credits roll, the sound of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit seems a strange and ill-fitting choice, but it does not stop Johnny Mad Dog from being a powerful expose of a world that is almost alien to the West.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com