The Dogs of War and The Wild Geese. Which versions are you watching?
I thought this might be worth bringing up here because these are two of the great old-school mercenary movies, and depending on where or when you watched them, you may not have actually seen the same movie as someone else.
The Dogs of War
There are two main cuts:
- American Cut: roughly 104 minutes
- International/UK Cut: roughly 118 to 119 minutes
The International Cut is not just the same movie with a few extra shots of violence. It restores around 15 minutes, mostly in the first two-thirds of the film, and quite a bit of it develops Christopher Walken's Jamie Shannon as a character.
Among the restored material are Shannon attending the baptism of a fellow mercenary's child, more of his relationship with the kid he knows in New York, and substantially more material involving his ex-wife Jessie.
There is also additional material dealing with the nuts and bolts of preparing the operation, including the weapons shipment, dealing with the arms supplier and ship's captain, getting the cargo through Spanish authorities, and a problem with a drawbridge during the final raid.
To me, those scenes make a real difference. The shorter American version plays more like a lean mercenary action thriller. The longer version spends more time showing who Shannon is when he isn't fighting, and it gives you more of the logistical side of mounting an illegal military operation.
If you've only ever seen the 104-minute version, the International Cut is absolutely worth tracking down.
The Wild Geese
This one is a little more confusing because it does not have the same neat "American Cut versus International Cut" situation.
The complete theatrical version runs about 134 minutes. There have also been shortened television and home-video presentations over the years, with material removed for running time and censorship.
That is why people who originally saw The Wild Geese on television or VHS sometimes remember a noticeably different movie from the version available on modern discs.
One other thing that can cause confusion is that some European PAL DVDs list a running time around 129 minutes. That does not necessarily mean five minutes have been cut. A 24 fps theatrical film transferred to 25 fps PAL runs roughly 4 percent faster, so a 134-minute film naturally comes out at about 129 minutes.
Modern releases are generally the way to go if you want the full film rather than one of the old broadcast edits.
And The Wild Geese is a movie where the full running time matters. There is obviously plenty of action, but there is also a surprising amount of character material, training, politics, and discussion of exactly what these mercenaries are doing and why. Chopping it down to fit a television slot changes the balance of the movie.
I find the comparison between these two films interesting because they are often lumped together as late-1970s and early-1980s "mercenary movies," but their alternate-version histories are quite different.
The Dogs of War. There are two genuinely different cuts, and I strongly prefer the longer International version.
The Wild Geese. Look for the complete roughly 134-minute version and be wary of old TV and VHS edits.