The Wild Geese is a British action movie made in 1978 and featuring a stellar cast including Roger Moore, Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger and Stewart Grainger. The plot revolves around a group of ageing mercenaries, led by Col Faulkner, played by Burton who are hired by a banker, played by Grainger.

The leaders of the mercenaries agree terms with the banker and set about hiring and training a group of troops in order to capture a deposed African leader. The movie shows how the group was put together and how the raid takes place. The fighting scenes in this film are excellent and well done but also show the awful reality of war.

Unfortunately, not to give too much of the plot away, things go wrong and the members of the mercenary group find themselves fighting for their lives. There are some moving encounters in the film some which may only make sense to viewers if they understand the political and social contexts of the time. A good example of this is the relationship between the African leader and a South African member of the mercenary band. As the film was made at the time of South African Apartheid, much is made of the tentative attempts made by the Black African and the White African to come to terms with their own shared humanity. The film was also made at the height of the Cold War when African nations sometimes became battlegrounds between proxy armies of either the free world or the un-free Soviet blocs.

This is a brilliant film and I’m really pleased to see that it was available to view. It’s a long film, over two hours but well worth taking the time to watch.