Johnny Mad Dog

Johnny Mad Dog

Director: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire

Written By: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire

Photography: Marc Koninckx

Starring: Christophe Minie, Maxwell Carter, Anthony King.

Year: 2008

Country: France, Belgium, Liberia

 I remember the night I first saw Boyz 'n the Hood I was left so traumatised by the film that I struggled to get to sleep that night. Not just from the tragedy of the film, but knowing also that the subjects and settings in which the film took place are in fact very real. 

 My experience of Johnny Mad Dog was not much different. Johnny Mad Dog follows a group child soldiers and their titled leader as they fight, rape and pillage their way to the capital of a deliberately unnamed West African state. Parallel to this it also follows Laokole, a teenage girl trying to protect her brother and disabled father. When the Johnny meets Laokole and witnesses her bravery and struggle, it might be enough to change him.


 Although the setting is undisclosed, the film was shot in Liberia and was the first ever feature film to be made there. The cast is made up of veteran child soldiers of the second Liberian War. The neorealism tone to the film sometimes makes you forgot you're watching a piece of fiction and not a unsettling piece of cinéma vérité. 

 Despite being anything but, stylistically the film feels a lot like modern day Hollywood war films, it's yet another movie to use the almost documentary style shaky-cam that we've been seeing in almost every war movie since Saving Private Ryan in 1998. 

 A difficult watch, but it rewards you for sticking it out through its insightfulness and an edifying tale of a human's ability to change despite the most extreme circumstances.  


Score: 4/5