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.
Comment
10/30/09
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Johnny Mad Dog (2008)
87
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:13
Rotten:2
Average Rating:7.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 37 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Director: Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
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Reviews for Johnny Mad Dog
1 - 18 (sorted by date)
A gut-wrenching, documentary-style look at a company of Kalashnikov-wielding kids.
10/30/09
Never letting up for a moment, you should go see - but prepare to be shocked.
10/30/09
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.
10/28/09
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.
10/23/09
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.
10/23/09
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.
10/23/09
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.
10/23/09
Top CriticThe film has an immediate power no one could deny.
10/23/09
This small, uncompromising masterpiece stands out in especially stark but refreshing relief.
10/23/09
Top CriticThe film is swift and gripping but rarely flashy or titillating; sympathetic to its anti-heroes without ever slighting their victims.
10/23/09
A brutal, blood-soaked film that feels like a primal scream.
10/23/09
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.
10/23/09
Raw, harrowing and unforgiving, Johnny Mad Dog is hardly easy to enjoy, but impossible to forget.
10/14/09
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10/18/08
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10/18/08
Top CriticClick to read the article
10/18/08
Top CriticJohnny Mad Dog is an assaultive fiction about Liberian child soldiers.
05/22/08
Top Critic1 - 18 (sorted by date)
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