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Day 7: Live from Cannes: Children take War Games to the next Level in ‘Johnny Mad Dog’
A portrait of what is occurring in certain geographical pockets of today’s Africa, place a gun in a minor’s hand and their childhood is instantly taken away from them – and we aren’t talking about the plastic, cops and robbers toy guns here but the a range of weapons that fill the streets with roting corpses. Un Certain Regard’s Johnny Mad Dog fires off several rounds of bullets, doesn’t bother bringing in too many diversions – this is a full course meal comprised of cruelty, savagery, looting, murder, rape and everything else that falls under the umbrella.
A portrait of what is occurring in certain geographical pockets of today’s Africa, place a gun in a minor’s hand and their childhood is instantly taken away from them – and we aren’t talking about the plastic, cops and robbers toy guns here but the a range of weapons that fill the streets with roting corpses. Un Certain Regard’s Johnny Mad Dog fires off several rounds of bullets, doesn’t bother bringing in too many diversions – this is a full course meal comprised of cruelty, savagery, looting, murder, rape and everything else that falls under the umbrella. What this 90 plus minute drama features are the mini commandos making choices like: who gets to live and who gets to die. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s fiction film directorial debut shows the effort it must take to employ a large amount of non-actor kids and to orchestrate a number of scenes that are heavily charged. [Note: Full review coming soon].