Johnny Mad Dog Review

With his first feature-length film, the documentary Carlitos Medellin (2004), Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire showed the devastation inflicted on the lives of young people by endless factionalisation and conflict in Colombia. While his second feature, Johnny Mad Dog, is not strictly a documentary, and is set in an unnamed Africa country, its theme is much the same - and its use of former child soldiers from Liberia (where it was shot) to play in effect themselves, not to mention its utter eschewal of the conventional pleasures of narrative, ensures its realist credentials. Those of a sensitive or sentimental disposition, however, or just those in search of easy viewing, should be warned that Sauvaire's film aims straight and takes no prisoners.

You can take comfort in the fact that Johnny Mad Dog was made with the full support of the Republic of Liberia and its post-war president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. You can take comfort in the fact that the filmmakers have established the Johnny Mad Dog Foundation which will continue to assist the development of Monrovia's abandoned youth. You can even take some small comfort in the fact that Johnny Mad Dog is 'only a movie', drawn from Emmanuel Dongola's fictionalised account of child soldiers ('Johnny Chien Méchant') in the rather different African conflict zone of the Congo - although the montage of Patrick Robert's actual Liberian war photos shown during the final credits, and their alarming similarity to all that has preceded on-screen, will greatly reduce that comfort. But there is precious little else in this raw, confronting film to let filmgoers remain within their complacent comfort zones.

Forced into soldiery at age 10 and unable to remember his real name, 15-year-old Johnny Mad Dog (Christopher Minie) is leading his 'Small Boy Unit' in a vicious assault on his country's capital, under orders from General Never Die (Joseph Duo). Grotesquely costumed and drugged up, the boys have been brainwashed into hating anyone connected to the nation's dominant Dogo tribe, and promised riches and family reunions should they succeed in bringing down the Dogo presidency - and so they terrorise, loot, rape and massacre their way through the city's streets, leaving nothing but death and sorrow in their wake. Meanwhile, 16-year-old student Laokolé (Daisy Victory Vandy) is struggling to keep her invalid father and her little brother safe from the advancing chaos.