Another fetid grimace of war Jean-Stefan Sauveur's film Johnny the Mad Dog. Based on the book by Emmanuel Dongala, written from the memories of children who by the will of fate witnessed the revolution, / or simply witnesses of hostilities /, in one of the countries of West Africa.
Jean-Stéphane Sauveur is a French director. He started as an assistant, made documentary films, and then short films. "Johnny the Mad Dog" is his first feature-length film, the director lived in Liberia for fifteen years before making this film.
Emmanuel Dogngala is a Congolese writer and chemist. He lives in the United States and teaches African French-language literature in New York.
The film was shot in Liberia, but the country in which the action takes place is not specified, /apparently meant that it can happen in any country /.
It’s not just a movie about children and war. And not even about children in war. Children can be used for political purposes in any country. More precisely, children in war are not accidental, they are well-thought-out decisions of the military leadership, they are just the strategy and tactics of modern war.
They are between twelve and fifteen years old. They call themselves "death sellers." Their commander is fifteen-year-old Johnny, the mad dog. They loot, rape, kill. It seems as if not serious, like playing, without thinking, just pressing the trigger of the machine.
The film is not that scary, worse, because the film raised the theme of those about which not so much did not think, but just it is aesthetically something unpleasant. But...
But this evil is present in this world, perhaps not so far from us.
So, a gang of juvenile thugs is moving through a war-torn country. They attack the village. Robbing, killing, talking about something, so many obscene words in the conversation of children you probably have not heard. Then they attack the city, where the Bad Council, / this is the name of one of the young soldiers of the detachment / stole a pig, and Johnny - a mad dog, met the girl Laokole, whom he fell in love with, but before that he killed.
However, enough for now about the film, let’s talk about what the film seems not.
We agree that we know little about Africa, of course, and far away, and the culture is different, and it is simply dangerous to go there.
But let’s continue, there is such an organization in Africa as the Army of the Resistance of God. In the assets of its fighters kidnapping, brutal murders, selling people into slavery, cannibalism, (by the way, Jean-Stephan Sauver did not want to include scenes of cannibalism in the film, spared the psyche of the European viewer /, did not include another thing, I will not even say that, in turn, not to alienate the viewer. Originated in Uganda in 1987, their bases are located almost all over Africa, Congo, Sudan, etc. The adherents of this organization want to establish a regime based on the Ten Commandments. But most importantly, they believe that only children are untouched by sin, so they just kill all adults, and children are kidnapped. Next, children are literally made "death machines", ideal warriors, ready at any moment to die for their leader. Say, a little different than the movie, not that Fedot. Do not rush to conclusions.
Let's just go back to the movie. Johnny's Mad Dog Squad reports to a Colonel. The colonel, who inspires his subordinates, in addition to trepidation and horror, and the fact that bullets bounce off them, and that by killing they do a good deed, and that, ... do not think, you should shoot.
This does not interfere with his own mercantile interests. After all, the muddy water of wartime is so well caught “golden” fish.
