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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
Thirty years ago this month, Andrew ‘Return from the River Kwai’ McLaglen released ‘The Wild Geese’ in UK cinemas.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
User comments on this story
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- Nigel said...
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Can't wait.
It is still one of the films I can watch over and over and over again....great cast, epic story and great stiff upper lip and British attitude of soldiering on in a desperate situation just like Rorkes Drift (Zulu), Battle of Britain etc.....
Has to be British cast. Let's face it we have the best; Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Sean Bean, Daniel Craig, Craig Fairbrass, Jason Statham, Jude Law and Clive Owen spring to mind.
Oh please get it done.......it could be exactly what "The Expendables" should have been but just never really got close. Posted on Dec 11 2011 22:50 - Report as inappropriate
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- dale said...
- why cannot you just leave the film alone !!!!!! and let it be what is was EH? .. all this bollox about danny dyer , ray winstone , etc ,etc this film is a classic now go and get a LIFE sad git xxxxx Posted on Apr 20 2011 13:45
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- Alan Thomas said...
- a re-make cannot come soon enough, there is plenty of fine british talent out there to fill the boots of the originals. must stick to the original story line. i believe anthony hopkins must be given the chance to appear in this film, along with, edward and james fox. Posted on Feb 26 2011 19:18
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- DES BLACKBURN said...
- RAY WINSTONE JUST HAS TO BE IN THIS MOVIE ALONG SIDE SEAN BEAN AND JASON STATHAM Posted on Oct 07 2010 19:13
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- Col.'Mad Mike' Conroy said...
- Budd Greco.Agree completely with your comments.Have you tried 'The Dogs Of War' (thats the John Irvin version taken from Frederick Forsyths novel of the same name)?An excellent portrayal of the merc in planning,preperation & operation.Burton is & was awesome & the Rod Taylor outing still ranks as one my favs... Posted on Aug 07 2009 10:44
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- Budd Greco said...
- The wild Geese was a classic film because not unlike The Mn Who Would Be King it is (unlike many of today`s offerings) a good story..Not simply dialogue and one dimensional characters used as a cover story to link umpteen computer generated action sequences..Your a remarkable man Mr Falkner..So I supose you had better shoot me..you are a remarkable man yourself Sir Edward..Si I suppose I better had...Got to be one of the best endings.All in all Burton as in ( Where Eagles Dare)and (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold) played anti-heroes best of all..and as mercenaries will alwys be the subject of folflore only The wild Geese and Mercenary with Rod Taylor ever remotely cut the mustard. Posted on Aug 04 2009 10:09
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- Col.'Mad Mike' Conroy said...
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Wid Geese remake,cant wait.So long as it stars an all Brit cast of over the top,well hard ex-mil types & stays faithful to the original (no American handsome,muscular heroes winning the day alone).Good luck & the Wild Geese will fly again.
p.s. Invite my hero Col.Michael Hoare of 5 Commando to appear in the movie.Make my life complete... Posted on Feb 03 2009 16:28 - Report as inappropriate
7 user comments
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