THE WILD GEESE (1978) *
We’ve seen The Wild Geese many times before and we’ve also seen it done a lot better many times before — the rounding up of the mercenary troops for their new mission, the basic training, the jail break, the great escape, the big double cross, the death scenes, etc.
If we pool our collective resources, undoubtedly we could brainstorm 50 or 100 titles easily and recall their overall plots and specific individual developments.
Worse, far worse, infinitely worse even, how do I describe the pace of The Wild Geese?
I thought about saying it moves at a snail’s pace, but then I quickly realized that it more accurately moves like a three-toed sloth dipped in molasses. This is one action movie that does not require slow motion because it’s already slow enough.
In fact, I am hard pressed to come up with an action movie that moves slower than The Wild Geese. I just can’t do it and I don’t want to ever find out if any do exist in this great big universe.
Anyway, we have the first 30 minutes to meet our stars Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Roger Moore, then around the 45-minute mark it’s basic training and finally around one hour in we get into the main action. I almost said jump, but that’s way too much activity for The Wild Geese. To be fair, The Wild Geese picks up the pace in the last hour to such a degree that only two of the three sloth toes are molasses drenched. Guess what, though, it’s still dull as dishwater.
Yes, indeed, there’s not an exciting moment to be found in The Wild Geese.
Of course, that incredible pace might have something to do with the fact Burton, Harris, and Moore were in their late 40s (Harris) and early 50s (Burton, Moore) when they made The Wild Geese. Harris and especially Burton are not the least bit convincing in their action hero roles. Moore was nearly halfway through his run playing British secret agent James Bond, so he’s more credible than his counterparts and looks much less a fool than either Harris or Burton.
It is ironic that Burton, Harris, and Moore are playing middle-aged mercenaries and the film drops mercenary dialogue routinely during a 135-minute spread, because the three main actors fit the adjective definition of mercenary — primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics.
It seems like they paid Burton, Harris, and Moore by the word during The Wild Geese, because they yap and yammer constantly, their barrage of banter only interrupted by the generic requirements of the action movie. Granted, it takes a (long) while before the prerequisite explosions and gunfire.
By my reckoning, a long, long, long, long, long, long while and The Wild Geese lives up only to the geese portion because it is something foul alright. Wild, however, it is most certainly not.
Attack of the Killer Librarian 