In this movie, the national airline in Zingaro has a great airplane, a two-engined Convair from the 1950s. They don't make 'em anymore. I mean the airplane, not the movie. They make movies like this all the time.<br /><br />A mega corporation wants the mineral rights in an African country ruled by a ruthless dictator. So the corporation organizes a private army to invade the nation, kill the dictator, and install a business-friendly dictator in his place. (Is that far fetched, or what?) Christopher Walken is hired to organize the mercenary army. They do their job, except that, at the end, in an ironic coda, they substitute a more independent president who will now rule his country with compassion.<br /><br />The film could have been written by a committee of MBAs who have figured out what the bottom line is. Whatever the bottom line turned out to be it was surely preceded by a dollar sign. The plot goes kind of in this order: intrigue, a little teaser of violence, more intrigue, a little completely irrelevant sex, more intrigue, the introduction to a couple of particularly lethal and ugly guns, and a violent shoot out full of explosions. The climactic violence assumes the familiar form of a handful of courageous and supremely skilled military types attacking a garrison of disorganized native troops. (Cf., "Predator," inter alia.) One of the mercenaries is killed through an excess of pity. The number of dead garrison troops is uncountable. Walken himself cold-bloodedly and deliberately shoots two unarmed men. It's a happy ending though because the guy who finally sits on the throne is a doctor and an idealist, and we are compelled to hope he remains that way instead of discovering that, hey, it's good to be the king.<br /><br />I haven't read Frederick Forsyth's novel on which this movie is based but I can't believe it's the sloppy lash up job that the movie is. Forsyth's details are usually exquisite. When you finish one of his novels you're likely to know how to rig up a bomb that will explode only when the car hits a bump.<br /><br />That was the beauty of Fred Zinneman's "The Day of the Jackal." How to commit identity theft, for instance. Here, all of that tedious business is skipped over. Walken is able to board a freighter posing as a seaman. Where did he get his credentials? Who knows. The producers don't care and we're not supposed to care either. We never heard of forged passports.<br /><br />Just before the invasion, the mercenaries are together going over the attack plan one last time and when they are done, Walkin raises his fist and shouts the name of the dictator they are about to murder and the other soldiers echo his gesture. And, mind you, these are supposed to be heroes, and we are expected to identify with them. Why don't they raise their fists and cry, "Money!"<br /><br />Not that pelf is the primary motive. What kind of person is willing to kill strangers and risk his own life for money? How do you murder someone whom you don't know and against whom you have nothing? And how do you think of yourself as a better man for having done it? Are there many of them around? I mean in the private sector? There must be some. There is Executive Outcomes, and there is at least enough of an audience of fantasists to support a magazine designed for mercenaries, "Soldier of Fortune." Of course we all seek self satisfaction through doing something that we know we can do well. The Germans called it Funktionslust. It may be innate in higher organisms. But this goes way past self satisfaction. Dignity elevated beyond pride into grandiosity.