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Johnny Mad Dog (2008)
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:13
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Dramas
Director: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
Director: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
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Reviews for Johnny Mad Dog
There is an odd whiff of post-colonial bongo-bongo about it — i.e. sit back, munch popcorn and watch the natives blow holes in each other.
Johnny Mad Dog is an assaultive fiction about Liberian child soldiers.
Imagine an African Lord of the Flies pulled off with the jittery expertise of The Hurt Locker, and you’re only some of the way to grasping what’s in store in Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s Johnny Mad Dog.
This small, uncompromising masterpiece stands out in especially stark but refreshing relief.
Raw, harrowing and unforgiving, Johnny Mad Dog is hardly easy to enjoy, but impossible to forget.
What end does a harrowing and horrifying film like this serve? Understanding? Political awareness? I’m not sure. One thing is certain: you won’t forget it in a hurry.
Never letting up for a moment, you should go see - but prepare to be shocked.
The film sees war as a deadener of moral and physical inhibition, a paradoxical state where there are no winners or losers, just the living and the dead. Stunning.
The film is swift and gripping but rarely flashy or titillating; sympathetic to its anti-heroes without ever slighting their victims.
War is brutalising, infantilising, dehumanising, requiring the unquestioning submission to authority. All soldiers are child soldiers: that is the bitterly cynical nightmare that Sauvaire's film insists upon to the very end.
A gut-wrenching, documentary-style look at a company of Kalashnikov-wielding kids.
Harrowing, violent and deeply disturbing, this realistic drama about children fighting in Liberia's grisly civil war (1999-2003) is not only a strong story, but it has wide resonance as a look at young people living without limits.
JMD may be technically superb but it is brutal and sick-making. As such, it's hard to fault . . . but I wouldn't watch the blasted thing again if you paid me.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 68% 68% | The Last Station | 12/23 |
| 75% 75% | Sherlock Holmes | 12/25 |
| 35% 35% | Nine | 12/25 |
| 33% 33% | It's Complicated | 12/25 |
| | Alvin and the Chipmunk… | 12/25 |
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