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The Dogs Of War [DVD] [1981]
 
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The Dogs Of War [DVD] [1981]

DVD ~ Christopher Walken
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Frequently Bought Together

The Dogs Of War [DVD] [1981] + The Odessa File [DVD] [1974] + Day Of The Jackal [DVD] [1973]
Total RRP: £34.97
Price For All Three: £12.24

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Dogs Of War [DVD] [1981]
87% buy the item featured on this page:
The Dogs Of War [DVD] [1981] 3.0 out of 5 stars (4)
£3.98
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Day Of The Jackal [DVD] [1973]
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The Odessa File [DVD] [1974]
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Product details

  • Actors: Christopher Walken, Tom Berenger, Colin Blakely, Hugh Millais, Paul Freeman
  • Directors: John Irvin
  • Writers: Frederick Forsyth, Gary DeVore, George Malko, Michael Cimino
  • Producers: Larry DeWaay, Norman Jewison, Patrick J. Palmer
  • Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English
  • Subtitles: Danish, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: MGM Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 18 Feb 2002
  • Run Time: 113 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00005UQVY
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 19,422 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War is an uneasy mix of espionage and combat that never really succeeds in either role. Based around the character of Paul Shannon, the film follows events in the fictional African state of Zagaro. Hired on a reconnaissance mission by a nameless multi-national corporation, Shannon is captured and tortured before his release, only to return to the country to lead a small band of mercenaries (the dogs of the title) in a bloody coup.

The first section of the movie works best, building a real sense of tension and unease, not least through a typically understated performance by Christopher Walken as the paranoid loner who keeps a pistol in his fridge (watch too for a brief appearance from a young Jim Broadbent). There are obvious references to the by-then obsolete school of Vietnam filmmaking in the second section, with the Asian enemy replaced by an African one. The gung-ho mentality of the soldiers is, however, so two-dimensional that the viewer develops little empathy for their plight. The action is slow and drawn out, with the seemingly endless pregnant pauses operating as a means for enabling the film to achieve a reasonable running time.

On the DVD: little is on offer here aside from the usual scene selection, audio and subtitle options and original cinema trailer. --Phil Udell



DVD Description

DVD Special Features:

Original theatrical trailer
Interactive menu Screens
Chapter Selections
Languages in Dolby Digital 5.1: English
Languages in Dolby Surround: English, German, Italian
Languages in Mono: French, Spanish Subtitles: French, Spanish, Norwegian, Italian, Danish, Durtch, Swedish, English for the hard of hearing, German for the hard of hearing
1.85: 1 widescreen 16:9 version

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Soldier of Fortune, 13 Jul 2002
I can't recall a film in which Walken gave a bad performance and this film is no exception. The story is simple but ultimately very satisfying (particularly the last sequence), and generally revolves around a band of mercenaries who are hired to carry out a coup in some African state. There is a slightly cliched presentation of African politics although you can't expect Hollywood movies to be intelligent too!
Ultimately, it's a good 'war' movie with decent effects and a plot.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Cry havoc..., 10 Nov 2007
By Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: The Dogs of War [DVD] [1981] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] (DVD)
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, though it seems Forsyth did just that. As a result, the film goes to great lengths to stress its veracity, with director John Irvin, still hot after the success of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, adopting the stripped-down near documentary style that served Fred Zinnemann so well with The Day of the Jackal. Irvin's subsequent work would sadly mark him out as one of the flattest action directors in the business, but here - perhaps leaning on the experience of cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who also directed Dark of the Sun - he delivers the goods surprisingly effectively. Underneath all the gritty pseudo-realism it's a very familiar story (Winston Ntshona practically plays the same role here as an imprisoned deposed president that he did in the more Boys' Own The Wild Geese three years earlier), but it's well told - or at least in the two-hour European cut of the film which, perversely, is only available on DVD in the US, and there in a version with dodgy synchronisation in the early scenes: Europe has to make do with the cut US version shorn of 16 minutes. Geoffrey Burgon's score makes good use of A.E. Housman's Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries while among the familiar faces in the supporting cast can be spotted Paul Freeman, Ed O'Neill, Jim Broadbent (as one of Blakely's film crew), Victoria Tennant and an unbilled Helen Shaver, though aside from Blakely, the standout performance probably comes from Hugh Millais' cold-fish middle man.

Once again, bear in mind that the US NTSC DVD is the uncut European version of the film, while the UK PAL DVD is the cut US version!
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to Zangaro, 25 May 2008
By Charles Vasey (London, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Christopher Walken plays the sentimental but tough mercenary in this film of Fredrick Forsyth's novel. Forsyth, who coverered Biafra, knows whereof he speaks on mercenary warfare especially of this era before the large corporates got involved. The Republic of Zangaro is a mixture of a number of African states under a Big Man before the era of Hobbesian chaos that you'll find in Blood Diamond. Although this is not a film with a message it nevertheless demonstrates how unpleasant such places are, especially as our hero falls into the hands of the Army and gets a spell in jail. Backed up by a number of excellent character actors this film stays firmly rooted in a ruthless but pre-Rambo realism.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother
This film felt like it was the longest I'd ever watched, or more accurately, endured.

If you have read the Frederick Forsyth book 'The Dogs of War', upon which this... Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2007 by B. Buckley

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