Johnny Mad Dog (2008)

Directed by: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire | 98 minutes | drama, war | Actors: Carlos Badawi, Teddy Boy, Maxwell Carter, Barry Chernoh, Eric Cole, Robert Davies, Prince Doblah, Joseph Duo, Papa Jackson, Jimmy Jacobs, Terry Johnson, Mohammed Kamara, Onismus Kamoh, Nathaniel J. Kapeyou, Massiata E. Kenneh Veronica Kollie, Léo Boyeneh Kote, Christophe Minie, Careen Moore, James Ragibo, Mohammed Sesay, Augustin Tokpa, Emmanuel Tozzi, Dagbeth Tweh, Daisy Victoria Vandy, Julius Wood, Alexander Zorga

“If you don’t wanna die, don’t be born!” it sounds like a kind of mantra from dozens of children’s throats, after a small village has been half killed. The child soldiers have just shown utter disrespect for their own lives, but above all that of others. Everyone in the village gets the same treatment: you are suspected in advance of harboring pro-national feelings and resulting support for the president of the unnamed African country where the story is set. They are called Dogos, these ‘darlings’ of the leader of the republic. And they will all have to pay for their wrong choice.

The leader of the group of child soldiers is fifteen-year-old Johnny Mad Dog. He has long forgotten his real name – in the rebel war everyone uses a pseudonym. His right-hand man is called No Good Advice and a boy with fake wings on his back goes through life as Butterfly. They take their orders from an adult, but otherwise they operate as an independent unit. And with a fanaticism that you rarely see adults display.

However, Johnny Mad Dog’s life seems to change when thirteen-year-old refugee Laokole crosses his path. Rather than subdue or shoot her, he decides not to reveal her existence to his troop. There seems to be some goodness in him somewhere. But it’s very deep. Perhaps too deep.

‘Johnny Mad Dog’ is an uncompromising film, as is clear from the opening scene mentioned above. Many of the young actors have experienced the atrocities of the civil war in their home country of Liberia themselves. The fact that they have been put under his belt by the French director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire can therefore raise the necessary ethical questions, but the fact remains that the children generally appear completely realistic in their respective roles. The young No Good Advice (Dagbeth Tweh) in particular convinces with his hard, screaming approach. But one of the most beautiful and wry scenes is reserved for Butterfly (Elijah Roger), who sings to a dead comrade: “It is my will that when I die/ Don’t bury me, don’t bury me/ You cut my dick in alcohol/ And call my wife and give it to her. […] And what the fuck she thinks she is/ She’s fucking around with my GI-dick”.

During the credits, photographs by war photographer Patrick Robert, taken in Liberia between 1989 and 2003, are shown, which were an important source of inspiration for the film. They show the reality of the sometimes carnavellesque appearance of the child soldiers and thereby also emphasize the absurd atrocities that children are capable of when their natural personal growth is taken away from them. That’s why and that’s why ‘Johnny Mad Dog’ is an important movie. That it is well acted and that it is stylistically tight is only a side issue. Despite all the possible ethical objections of the production, Sauvaire has delivered a film that really matters!