I really don't know what to make of this film. It is supposed to be a fictitious, generic African civil war though the setting is obviously Liberia , and the story relates very little to the actual 14 year Liberian nightmare.
It's like a montage of rebel atrocities without context or explanation. Johnny Mad Dog is the 16 year old CO of a small boy unit, part of the "Teah John Rebels" fighting against the mysterious "Dogo" people. But the "Dogo" despot is a composite of Charles Taylor and Samuel Doe.
The Director, Jean Claude Sauvant, seems familiar with rebel behavior, tactics and language, but not very interested in the story behind them. Kids do not become such monsters without severe childhood trauma. We see what they became, but not a hint of the razed villages and murdered parents, violated female relatives and forced conscription into the rebel armies, or the international factors involved, the plunder of diamonds, timber and other natural wealth, the arming of the rebel factions by the global capitalist mafia.
The language is authentic Liberian English and the child actors are good. Christopher Minie is a very believable Johnny Mad Dog. But there is very little "story": Basically, Mad Dog kills, rapes or terrorizes everything in his path, but in the end is killed by one of his victims, a twelve year old girl with presumably no combat experience, who beats him nearly to death with his own AK, and then shoots him. Makes absolutely no sense.
And there are no subtitles. Even I had trouble sometimes understanding what they were saying. Has to be problematic for an international audience. And why are the Bangladeshi UN peace keepers speaking English with a Liberian accent? The film apparently provided employment for a number of Liberians. What other financial benefits are to be derived by the Liberian people is not clear. But if the country benefits financially, does it also benefit in terms of its image? Does the film help a traumatized nation heal? Or does it just add to the plunder and rape of the country? Were the forced sex scenes really necessary, for instance? The image of a well dressed, obviously educated female newscaster being violated on the floor of the TV station is very powerful. What kind of subliminal message is being sent? To a country run by westernized Africans? I understand there are some unresolved differences between the filmmakers and the government of Liberia . I do not know if they are financial or cultural, but I suspect the gratuitous sex and cannibalism depicted, and the generally unflattering portrayal of Liberians is part of it. At least I hope so. I really can't see how MICAT would put its stamp of approval on this film.
But you could make the argument that it is a realistic portrayal of Liberians, I suppose. It is interesting that Sauvant inserts an MLK voice-over where Dr. King proclaims that a hundred years after the emancipation proclamation, "negroes" were still not free. One can see the continuity in the terrorization of Africans by their own for the economic benefit of the global capitalists. From the 18th century kings and chiefs who used their hired thugs to raid villages for slaves and terrorize the countryside to the Black slave drivers on the plantations, from the Liberian Frontier Force and the ethnically "Americo" but culturally Grebo Yancy and Tubman to the PRC, Charles Taylor and the other warlords, to the gangs terrorizing ghettos in America and Africa, the central thread running through the history of African people is that of African hired thugs doing the dirty work of the global capitalist mafia, Africans aiding in their own destruction for the profit of others.
In that context you can better understand a Johnny Mad Dog. Traumatized people make the best slaves, slave raiders, slave drivers, or "rebel fighters," and others who Fela referred to as "Zombie." It's called the Willie Lynch theory. People think it started on America 's southern plantations and in the West Indies . But it didn't. It started right there on the west coast of Africa .
The chaos, anarchy and terror depicted in this film uncannily resemble the state of affairs at the time of Liberia 's founding. The only thing missing is the slave ships loading up with people in Vai Town or Trade Town . Seems this reign of terror for the enrichment of the coastal African elites and their European partners was only briefly interrupted by the 138-year existence of the first republic.
And that is a chilling, very sobering thought.
It's like a montage of rebel atrocities without context or explanation. Johnny Mad Dog is the 16 year old CO of a small boy unit, part of the "Teah John Rebels" fighting against the mysterious "Dogo" people. But the "Dogo" despot is a composite of Charles Taylor and Samuel Doe.
The Director, Jean Claude Sauvant, seems familiar with rebel behavior, tactics and language, but not very interested in the story behind them. Kids do not become such monsters without severe childhood trauma. We see what they became, but not a hint of the razed villages and murdered parents, violated female relatives and forced conscription into the rebel armies, or the international factors involved, the plunder of diamonds, timber and other natural wealth, the arming of the rebel factions by the global capitalist mafia.
The language is authentic Liberian English and the child actors are good. Christopher Minie is a very believable Johnny Mad Dog. But there is very little "story": Basically, Mad Dog kills, rapes or terrorizes everything in his path, but in the end is killed by one of his victims, a twelve year old girl with presumably no combat experience, who beats him nearly to death with his own AK, and then shoots him. Makes absolutely no sense.
And there are no subtitles. Even I had trouble sometimes understanding what they were saying. Has to be problematic for an international audience. And why are the Bangladeshi UN peace keepers speaking English with a Liberian accent? The film apparently provided employment for a number of Liberians. What other financial benefits are to be derived by the Liberian people is not clear. But if the country benefits financially, does it also benefit in terms of its image? Does the film help a traumatized nation heal? Or does it just add to the plunder and rape of the country? Were the forced sex scenes really necessary, for instance? The image of a well dressed, obviously educated female newscaster being violated on the floor of the TV station is very powerful. What kind of subliminal message is being sent? To a country run by westernized Africans? I understand there are some unresolved differences between the filmmakers and the government of Liberia . I do not know if they are financial or cultural, but I suspect the gratuitous sex and cannibalism depicted, and the generally unflattering portrayal of Liberians is part of it. At least I hope so. I really can't see how MICAT would put its stamp of approval on this film.
But you could make the argument that it is a realistic portrayal of Liberians, I suppose. It is interesting that Sauvant inserts an MLK voice-over where Dr. King proclaims that a hundred years after the emancipation proclamation, "negroes" were still not free. One can see the continuity in the terrorization of Africans by their own for the economic benefit of the global capitalists. From the 18th century kings and chiefs who used their hired thugs to raid villages for slaves and terrorize the countryside to the Black slave drivers on the plantations, from the Liberian Frontier Force and the ethnically "Americo" but culturally Grebo Yancy and Tubman to the PRC, Charles Taylor and the other warlords, to the gangs terrorizing ghettos in America and Africa, the central thread running through the history of African people is that of African hired thugs doing the dirty work of the global capitalist mafia, Africans aiding in their own destruction for the profit of others.
In that context you can better understand a Johnny Mad Dog. Traumatized people make the best slaves, slave raiders, slave drivers, or "rebel fighters," and others who Fela referred to as "Zombie." It's called the Willie Lynch theory. People think it started on America 's southern plantations and in the West Indies . But it didn't. It started right there on the west coast of Africa .
The chaos, anarchy and terror depicted in this film uncannily resemble the state of affairs at the time of Liberia 's founding. The only thing missing is the slave ships loading up with people in Vai Town or Trade Town . Seems this reign of terror for the enrichment of the coastal African elites and their European partners was only briefly interrupted by the 138-year existence of the first republic.
And that is a chilling, very sobering thought.