The Dogs of War (Widescreen Edition) John Irvin Digital Life VHS

The Dogs of War (Widescreen Edition)
starring: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais, Paul Freeman
directed by: John Irvin

Used Price: $5.95
Collectible Price: $14.95
Third Party New Price: $7.13

Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780792838098
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, HiFi Sound, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792838092
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Release Date: April 14, 1998
Running Time: 102 minutes
Sales Rank: 86162
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: February 13, 1981

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
Back before Christopher Walken became a caricature of himself, when he was still considered a rising actor based on his Oscar® for The Deer Hunter, he made this graphic, exciting action film, about a group of professional mercenaries. Walken leads a band of soldiers of fortune, who are hired to overthrow a dictator in West Africa (think Idi Amin). But when their mission is compromised by political and monetary forces, Walken returns to the United States, disillusioned, battered, and not sure the high life of lawyers, guns, and money is really for him. Still, vengeance is sweet, as his partner, Tom Berenger, keeps whispering into his ear. A better film than it's generally given credit for, The Dogs of War features the kind of cool, detached performance Walken used to be capable of, before he began believing both the hype and ridicule about his over-the-top style. --Marshall Fine

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Quite interesting...
Shannon (Christopher Walken) is a mercenary war who accepted for the sum of 15,000 dollars to fly to a fictional country in West Africa on a survey mission to procure military information concerning the stability of a dictator's regime, his position strength, and if there is any chance for a coup?

Posing as an American naturalist--especially in native birds--Shannon landed in Zangaro and gathered all the facts he needed but after suffering a brutal beating from the guards for taking pictures of one of the mistresses of the dictator's in front of his compound...

When he's offered a large amount of money to gather a well-equipped mercenary force and go back to Zangaro and lead a military takeover, he reluctantly assents...

The assault has authority, power and unexpected... consequences. So don't miss it!

Rating:

- Damn good picture without any easy answers....
This is a great film, a film that hasn't dated and a film where you can watch Christopher Walken before he became a rather silly parody of himself. Walken plays a mercenary hired by a conglomorate/corporation to check out a 3rd world African country. The person that hires Walken has ties to investors who want to know how stable the country is, and whether they need to instigate a coup de tat to install a more "friendlier" leader. The corporation decides that a new leader is needed, but Walken and his crew have other things on their minds, leading to an unexpected (and believable) ending.

The best thing about this film is that it just shows the events without restorting to simplistic, "this is bad" tones that mar many Hollywood films. The film has no easy answers and poses no easy questions. It just shows you how coups occur, why they occur, and what happens after they're done. It's a neat little ... Read More

Rating:

- Cry havoc...
The Dogs of War is part of that subgenre of war movies that briefly blossomed in the late-sixties and seventies but found little favor in subsequent years, the story about the ageing mercenary who suffers a crisis of conscience (Dark of the Sun, The Wild Geese, Savior etc). It was also the last significant attempt to turn Christopher Walken into a mainstream leading man in the Brando mould on the back of his Deer Hunter Oscar, with the trailer and marketing almost ignoring co-stars Tom Berenger and, despite delivering the film's best performance as a cynical documentary filmmaker, Colin Blakely. Certainly Walken takes a beating as convincingly as Brando, though the public weren't biting in 1981.

Frederick Forsyth's novel gained much notoriety due to the excessive lengths he went to in researching it - few writers would actually invest in a hastily abandoned African coup d'etat to get the inside details right, ... Read More

Rating:

- Fascinating movie
This is a great video. Christopher Walken plays a mercenary who plans to carry out a coup in a an African country on behalf of a multinational corporation, and he plays it very well. Walken plays a convincing psycho in just about anything he's in. The story is believable and the plot moves along very well in this film. Of course, there's much more to the story in the book but overall the movie is faithful to the storyline.

By the way, look for an early appearance by the actor who plays Al Bundy in Married With Children.

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