Dog Soldiers

[Foxbat]

This film was mentioned on the boards a while back but I’ve only now gotten around to watching it.

The Plot: A squad of British soldiers are on exercise somewhere in a remote part of Scotland when they come across the sole survivor of a group of Special Ops. Eventually, it comes to light that the Ops guys were hunting for a werewolf – but didn’t realise that they were dealing with a pack. Meanwhile England are playing Germany at football (that’s soccer to y’all Americans) and nobody knows the latest score.

A well-shot, well-scripted film, which brings home the sense of isolation felt by the group as they try to survive. A case of the hunter becoming the hunted. Eventually, they make their way to an old house where they decide to set up their defenses and endure the onslaughts until dawn.

The house situation leads us into a series of set-pieces with good, claustrophobic hand camera work. This bit borrows a lot from the camera techniques used in both Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan – and works well.

If it all sounds a bit clichéd and predictable – it is - but don’t worry. The scriptwriter’s masterstroke was to make this movie with a wonderful thread of black comedy running through it – weaving and stitching this series of set-pieces together with some clever dialogue and great one-liners.

A most enjoyable and refreshing British movie that is certainly worth an hour and a half of anybody’s time. Best of all – you can get it for under a tenner on DVD.

Finally, watch the end credits. I just love the newspaper front page that pops up during them (and you get the football result as well )

[ravenus]

Nice review. Another good point about this film is that the actors do very good jobs and their characters are thankfully not too stereotypic in the Hollywood vein.
I enjoyed this film a lot when I saw it.

[Foxbat]

You're right about the characters. On top of that, I'm so glad that Hollywood didn't get their hands on this one - the humour is far too subtle and would have been lost in production.

I can just see Bruce Willis as a Cockney killing machine