A group of Aging British Mercenaries is sent into a generic South Central African country to kidnap a former African dignitary. In a vain attempt to either establish a Democratic (or at the very least British friendly) African government.
Or at least create a disruption within the every African nation so the British can acquire copper mining for their own Imperial needs.
But the mission goes topside and the very man who sent the mercenaries to kidnap the guy decide to just make a direct deal with the original dictators of the nation and leave the mercenaries along with their captured cargo to die at the hands of a bunch of ''supposedly'' elite soldiers. Hunting them down in the middle of generic southern Africa.
This mythical country is supposedly above Rhodesia. Otherwise I couldn't say.
Also the African elite soldiers are kind of useless.
The first few groups do okay at picking off random members of the Wild Geese.
The last group is just running headlong into mortar fire as if they were trained by the criminal organizations from the later Rambo films.
Or possibly Stormtroopers from Star Wars.
Either way there's a lot of death and destruction and most of the wild geese are killed simply by sheer numbers.
There's a strange imperialistic undertone to everything and I don't think the movie was trying to make comparisons to the old Zulu invasions by row after row of speared tribal militia taking on British soldiers with Maxim guns. But that's the vibe I got.
Also there's some racial tensions between one of the wild geese and they're kidnapped prisoner having to do with apartheid and black and white racial tensions running rampant throughout the lands at this time.
It's dated and it comes off a little tacky, but I give the movie props for at least acknowledging the existence of the problem and wanting to bring some sort of commentary do it; as opposed to just denying it existed to begin with.
Overall it's fairly enjoyable film. Lots of action, some pretty good character acting from all of our typical big name British actors.
The tone of the movie is little inconsistent at times.
We start out with a recruitment session involving grizzly trench coat clad British men fighting off Mafia Hitman and destroying drug deals before moving on to a campy training montage that reminds me of something out of Hogan's Heroes. Before getting into the meat of the movie; which would be the Halo Mission into southern Africa to kidnap the government official. Which then turns into a survival story of men being hunted down by an armed militia.
It all technically works. It just feels like it was directed by different people sometimes.
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