From its blistering, shocking opening "Johnny Mad Dog" never lets up. The subject is a civil war in an unnamed African country, but more specifically it deals with the boy soldiers fighting on the side of the rebels and it presents us with a terrifying view of humanity, of a world gone mad or maybe simply of evil run riot. Using a cast of non-professionals Jean-Stephane Sauvaire's film is like a documentary on slaughter; it's certainly one of the most realistic depictions of war on film and is all the more frightening in that the soldiers are mostly children.
Sauvaire directs it beautifully, (it was only his second feature), and it's magnificently photographed and edited while the 'acting' of his young cast is distressingly real. Indeed not since Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers" have I seen a film that dealt with urban warfare as effectively as this. Needless to say it is far from an easy watch but it is an absolutely essential one.
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