I once had a friend from Sweden. She was a lovely girl, the very stereotype of a Swede. Tall, blonde, very friendly. At no point in our many conversations did it ever occur to me that Sweden could ever be anything other than the sweetest place on Earth. I mean, we're not talking Norway here, with its legions of black metal bands sacrificing each other to Satan and filming themselves as they blow their own heads off with shotguns. No, this is Sweden, home of the sexy people. This is not Denmark, with its awful yet strangely compelling Reptilicus. This is Sweden, home of all those cute exchange students from 1980s teen sex comedies that would be in the cafeteria, bending over to show their cleavage while they hold two cantaloupes and say, "Ya, vere shoult I poot dees melons?"

Little did I know that the smiling face of Sweden hid a secret side, one replete with out-of-shape beer guzzlers shooting each other in slow motion.

Admittedly, I know very little about Swedish cinema. I always assumed it would be full of Scandinavian types in fields singing hearty, happy songs while animatronic squirrels and birds danced in a nearby meadow. I know that's how it is in Finland, as I was taught by many a Russo-Finnish fantasy film like Magic Voyage of Sinbad and Sword and the Dragon. And for some reason, I always figured the Swedes to be similar in nature.

Truth be known, I really don't know a whole lot about any Scandinavian country apart from the fact that I want to visit them all and Iceland gave us Bjork, a feat that is alternately enchanting and annoying. And I know about the black metal stuff from Norway, and the Vikings, but that's about it. Oh, and all those Valhalla types hangin' around the heavens like a bunch of bikers. And ummm ... let's see. Nope, that's about it. Oh yeah, Ingmar Bergman and fishermen in sweaters. And Reptilicus. So I guess I know more about Scandinavia than I thought, though most of it probably won't come in all that handy if I'm over there.


But among the many things I didn't know about, at least until very recently, was that a Swedish action film existed, much less kicked my ass nine different ways and then gave me a black eye to let everyone know what a wuss I'd been. I'm always overjoyed when I stumble across something so wild and new, and then I'm always pissed off that no one told me about it earlier. Why did it take me until 1998 to learn about Maurizio Merli and violent Italian cop films from the 1970s? It's reassuring, if nothing else, that after all this time and all these twisted movies, there is still so much out there for me to experience. The good thing about this hobby is that no matter how deep you get into it, you're really never going to do more than scratch the surface. Just when you are patting yourself on the back for having see the Filipino musical version of Batman, you find out about the Turkish rip-off of Star Trek. And just when you find that, someone comes along and mentions Bruce Lee Versus Gay Power to you.

It's like playing Space Invaders. No matter how long you play, no matter how good you are, there's always more waves of space invaders to face. You'll never finish the game, because there is no finish to it. The game is in the playing; not in the completion. So, too, is the eternal quest for obscure films and endless journey into the darkest corners of the world's video vaults. You start feeling all bad-ass because you've developed a keen knowledge of Italian Road Warrior rip-off films from the 1980s, and then you meet someone who is going, "What? You aren't familiar with Filipino midget spy films? You plebe!" While it's frustrating, it's also nice to know that we're never going to run out of this stuff no matter how much we watch.

Which brings us to War Dogs, a Swedish action film that seems inspired to absurdity by the slow-motion blood-letting of Sam Peckinpah films. Unfortunately, there's no Ally McGraw, but you can't have everything. War Dogs begins with an army of Lou Reeds shooting up an entire grocery store, including little kids who, like everyone else, die in gory slow-motion amid exploding squibs that contain more blood in a single packet than most people have in their whole body. Now some people may be offended by this, while others are offended by my stating that (velvet) underground music legend Lou Reed did it. To the first count, I'm not going to try and sit here and debate the merits of blowing kids away in movies. That's a touchy subject, and while I'm not shy about touchy subjects, I'm just too tired. As for the other thing, the thing about Lou Reed, well that I can go on about.

Like many of you, I was shocked that an army of Lou Reeds would ruthlessly level a whole crowd of people at a crummy roadside food mart, including men, women, children, and for some reason, a wedding party. What the hell kind of guy takes his new bride to a run-down food mart after the wedding? Like he was on his way to the reception but just had to stop for some Zingers. It reminded me of this time my friend Jenn and I were driving from Gainesville to Kentucky and stopped for some food in a small rural town somewhere in Georgia along I-75. It was prom night, and there were scores of kids in formals at the Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was quaint and sad in a way.


Anyway, back to Lou Reed. Even more shocking than an army of Lou Reeds murdering people is the fact that someone would even bother to make an army of Lou Reeds in the first place, but every one of these guys looks like him. Kinky hair. Same facial structure. Same mirror sunglasses. If you were training a small force of super-soldiers, I guess there is some psychological advantage to making them look like Lou Reed. Personally, I would have made them look like Iggy Pop and Shane MacGowan, but what do I know about elite battalions? Suffice to say, if I saw Lou reed or a reasonable facsimile thereof coming after me with a radio headset and machine gun, I'd probably get to runnin', especially if Metal Machine Music is playing in the background.

Of course, now I can't stop thinking about creating entire armies of killer copies of various spooky looking underground music icons. An army of Nick Cave. An army of Tom Waite. An army of Robert Smith -- that's not as intimidating as it is just plain scary. Or how about an army of Army of Lovers. Ugh!

After the slaughter that opens what we can already peg as a movie that is fun for the whole family since it is willing to slaughter the whole family, we cut to our hero, an ex-soldier whose physical prowess brings to mind Joe Don Baker. It's that type of build you make fun of from afar but you know the guy is probably more than enough to pound your scrawny ass into the dirt while still having enough time to spill beer down the front of his t-shirt. Sure, I make jokes about Joe Don Baker, but if I met him face to face, I'd kiss his ass and beg him not to beat me senseless with a baseball bat. He'd probably laugh at me and kick some dirt in my face, leaving me squirming on the ground like a pathetic worm while he strode off into the sunset, guffaws trailing off into the air as he thought about how funny it would be to tell his drinking buddies what a spineless coward I was.

Anyway, the guy is upset because it's been years and there is still no official word about his brother who disappeared in Vietnam, presumably alongside Sin Jin, Jan Michael Vincent's adopted brother in Airwolf. Despite there being no proof, the government says the brother is dead, and that's that. But our hero doesn't believe them because, well, the government is always trying to cover that sort of stuff up. Just ask Rambo and Braddock. A token military funeral doesn't assuage our hero's doubts.

Our man soon hooks up with a reporter who has some information about the missing brother, but before they can meet, the reporter is gunned down by one of the many Lou Reeds. And of course, the hero arrives just seconds later, and then the cops arrive seconds after that and find him with the body. So now you have one of those movies where the hero must stay one step ahead of the law as he fights to clear his name and find the real killer, right? Nope. Turns out the real killer was hiding in the bathroom and he just walks out and blows away a bunch of cops. He probably throws a grenade, too, because these Lou Reeds have a tendency to sort of overdo things. They'd kill a mosquito by gunning it down with a Browning Automatic Rifle. Well, at least that's cleared up. Although denied the "innocent man must prove his innocence" cliche, we do have to have one of those scenes where the inspector keeps stumbling across our hero at the scene of the latest carnage and has to give the ol' "Everywhere you go, people turn up dead," speech, which I myself hear all the time.


To the inspector's credit, he's right. It's about the only decent cop work he does. There are a ton of shoot-outs, and lots of people die amid truly preposterous amounts of exit wound blood. I don't think I've seen shoot-outs this gratuitously bloody ever before, and as you know, gratuitously bloody is the way things ought to be. John Woo could watch this film and learn a thing or two. There's a particularly wild shoot-out at an amusement park, which results in one of the Lou Reeds being killed -- along with some sidekick type and a fistful of innocent bystanders old and young alike -- though it takes like a dozen shots to the chest and head to drop him. An ordinary man would think no ordinary man could survive that many shots, therefore the Lou Reed guy must be either hopped up on angel dust or a genetically engineered super soldier who has been assembled from the parts of other dead soldiers.

When our hero finally tracks the mayhem to an old warehouse, he discovers the horrible secret -- well, sort of -- that these are indeed Frankenstein Monster soldiers who have been brought back from the dead and brainwashed to be ruthless killing machines. This is never stated flat-out, but all the promo stuff I've read for this movie assures me they are super-soldiers brought back from the dead. And what do you know? His brother is one of them!

The guy gets captured and tortured, then gets to have a fist fight with another out-of-shape guy, who also happens to be the leader of all the zombie soldiers. This guy has been genetically engineered to be hairier than your average soldier. He crosses the line from back hair and goes way into "fine pelt" territory. We're talking the Robin Williams end of the spectrum. The hero gets kicked some more, and then we finally get the big escape during which he brings his brother back from the brink of madness, and the two of them haul ass through the woods. Of course, there like nine million people after them, complete with armored personnel carriers and tanks. It's one of the wildest sequences ever, and sure to have even the most jaded action fans howling madly with delight as our two heroes perform countless feats of amazing driving while still being able to fire off bazookas and machine guns. It's sort of like the crazy finale car chase in Road Warrior, only in the woods and with a ton more blood, charred bodies, stabbings, slit throats, and crackpot grenade tossing.

In a lesser movie, that would be the finale. But no! We get more! The hero and his brother return home and everyone is happy until they realize that no matter how hard he tries, the brother can't keep from trying to kill people. Man, you think you're on easy street after escaping a million Lou reed looking super-soldiers, and then you find out you got a whole other hassle waiting for you. What a downer.

As the two brothers face off with each other, and the one brother faces off with his own programming, they both also face off with the police, who have finally showed up to deal out some lunkheaded justice. Somewhere out there is a competent police force that can solve a crime without having the solution handed to them on a silver platter along with two dozen dead troopers. But those guys have never been in an action movie.

Well, what can I really say about this insanely violent romp through the woods of Sweden? It's absolutely incredible. Non-stop action, the most insanely gory shoot-outs since Peckinpah went over the edge, chubby guys kicking ass and doing heroic things -- jeez, what more could you possibly want from an action film? I guarantee you this one will knock your socks off and leave you hooting for more as you throw various items around your room in pure, unbridled joy. While you may have been trained in film school to analyze the subtext and look for meaning in a Scandanavian film, about all you can do here is laugh with glee at the carnage, and if there is a message here, it is, "Don't go messing with super soldiers who look like Lou Reed, unless you are an average soldier who looks like Joe Don Baker."

Labels: Action: War