Johnny Mad Dog

Johnny Mad Dog hits you like a punch in the jaw straight from the opening shot, and doesn't let up the entire way. The film directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire was for me the stand out film of the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2008. The raw, splendidly gritty film making technique displayed to the full house at the forum has left an image in my head that wont leave me for a long time.

The film depicts a group of soldiers in their early teens and the lives they lead as a gang of freedom fighters in an unnamed African country. Their country has been plagued by war for many years to the point there its all the young boys have ever known. It highlights the loss of innocence amongst the young boys and extreme dramatic realities of the civil situation in the country.

The film for me had some likenesses to Fernando Murielle's and Kátia Lund's 'City of God', as both deal with the corruption of young peoples lives in poverty stricken landscapes. While 'Johnny Mad Dog' doesn't quite hits the incredible heights of 'City of God', its by no means any less of a film. 'Johnny Mad Dog' hits you with more of a documentary feel, lots of hand-held camera, yet shot compositions are still carefully considered and beautifully realized. 'Johnny Mad Dog' does away with a lot of overly stylistic editing, which presents the events of the characters as a very truthful experience.

The performances are incredible. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, has shaped some amazing moments from a cast of non-actors. In the Q and A afterwards he explained his pre- production techniques and his unyielding intent on casting boys who had had actually been soldiers in their past. For this, the utmost respect is disserved for him.

Sauvaire's vision of this bleak situation doesn't hold back for a moment. It grabs the audience by the neck, and puts in the middle of the disorderly gang. I'm very glad I had the opportunity to experience it.

85/100

Harry High Pants.

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.

Along with Full Metal Jacket (1987), Apocalypse Now (1979), Paths of Glory (1957) and others, this film joins that august group of anti-war films which attempts to provide a realistic glimpse into the chaos of war.

Using documentary-style filming and editing techniques, the story centers upon a small group of boy soldiers who we first see brutally murder and rape some villagers; then they attack a TV station, killing and raping as they go; and finally they launch a major assault, with their larger army, upon a medium sized town where they once again go on a killing spree.

Finally, with their objectives achieved, General Never Die (Joseph Duo) disbands the army, tells the boy soldiers that it's all over, so now "Go and do something else." While there is a large cast of first time actors playing the roles of the boy murderers, the story focuses upon Johnny Mad Dog (Christopher Minie) as the boss of the small group, and Laokole (Daisy Victoria Vandy) a young girl who is trying to save her wounded father and her brother, Fofo (Onismus Kamoh).

During the hectic fighting scenes in the final assault, Johnny and Laokole (grimly holding onto her small brother) accidentally meet on a staircase in a deserted building. He stops, gun ready, but instead of interrogating her and perhaps killing her, they gaze at each other until one of his grunts calls Johnny back onto the street. Grudgingly, reluctantly, he goes back to his killing machines…

Later, towards the end, the two meet again under different circumstances and we see the full irony of the effects of war upon individuals: but we are left in a state of uncertainty about the outcome of that meeting, much like we might feel after reading a news story about the real wars in Africa with real boy soldiers that still continue – even as I write and you read.

There are short moments of gallows humor with a live pig; for the most part, however, there is just unrelenting killing, raping, and slaughtering of innocents and, implicitly, the death of hope. So, it's not a film for those who cannot watch the worst of human depravity during war.

Technically, the production cannot be faulted. The direction is superb, garnering performances from newcomers that must be seen to fully appreciate. The camera work fits the situation of quasi-documentary. The sounds of war are realistic and actually remind me of sounds I've heard recently in the current slaughter of civilians in Syria.

Highly recommended, but not for kids, obviously.

March 11, 2012.

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.

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.

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