Flick Pick: The Wild Geese

The Wild Geese
(Allied Artists, 1978)

Marvelous adventure film from Euan Lloyd by director Andrew McLaglen. Headed by a magnificent all-star cast, populated with fantastic British character actors and a couple of actual former mercenaries, it was well-scripted, reasonably accurate, exciting, and topical. Shot primarily on location in South Africa, where despite the carping of the perpetually offended, it was a hit with both white and black audiences, as it was in the rest of the world. It also took on real issues amidst a good yarn in a fictional place, and is the rare war adventure in an era where small wars were rampant that wasn't a look back to WWII.