Our six heroes arrive in the desolate Scottish countryside, via chopper, believing what faces them is a mundane, run of the mill training exercise. The troops think that their worst case scenario is missing the England-Germany football match. They discover a worse fate than losing another penalty shootout - a pack of ravenous werewolves.
The platoon are first confronted by Ryan, a wounded British Special Forces Captain, and what looks like the bloody and slaughtered remains of Ryan’s supposedly elite squad. Before Cooper and co. get a chance to gather their breath - or say ‘silver bullets’- hairy creatures with sharp claws and saliva-drenched teeth swarm them from all sides! In the confrontation one troop is killed and ‘Sarge’ (Sean Pertwee) is almost mauled to death. With a nod to gore-fest movies, his intestines are sprawled across the ground. With a nod to comedy, he then hastily tries to rearrange his intestines into some workable position whilst he and his troops are running away from the savage beasts.
The troops reach an abandoned house and try to desperately hang until the sun light which is their only source of salvation. Armed with a flash camera, a glow stick, a machine gun and a lighter equipped with a deodorant our heroes face a night with the savage beasts. The great siege takes place in the ‘abandoned shack that hasn’t had permanent occupants in a long time.’ ( Wow, never seen that one before.)
Kevin McKidd (Planet 51, Train Spotting, War) plays the smart, skilled, sexy protagonist, Cooper, a no-nonsense, Scottish hard man. We see a flashback outlining his journey to the platoon. Cooper was on the verge of joining the Special Forces but when refused to shoot a dog on training exercise he was booted out of Special Forces and demoted into the regular army. The confrontation between Cooper and Ryan (the man who tried to make him kill the dog) is a running theme of the film, and the Director shows them often in close up, as the two antagonists. This is an example of the use of the mise en scene to convey atmosphere and meaning. Cooper is not afraid to go against authority. He will stand up for what he sees as right, whatever the consequences.
The opening scenes leave the audience in no doubt of what is to come - pure guts and bloodshed with a comedy touch. The scene starts with a couple in a tent sharing a romantic kiss that is unexpectedly interrupted by the sight of their hastily made tent’s zip being slowly opened. We cut to see the first of three spectacular extreme-close ups.
The first is the sight of the couple as they realise their romantic night is being put on hold by some unexpected intruder. The second is the reaction of the boyfriend, a close-up of his facial expression of complete disbelief as he sees his girlfriend ripped limb from limb, blood splattering over the tent and his face! The final close up, the most powerful, is just the girlfriend’s hand. We see her attempt to claw her way back into the tent and the normality that she once knew. Too late. She is pulled from sight by the unknown fiend and devoured off-cam.
Oliver Cromwell famously said “paint me warts and all.” Luckily Dog Soldiers’ face isn’t covered with ghastly warts. It is relatively untouched, yet it does carry a few tiny pimples. The characters. Yes, very amusing but they have no depth, and there is no sense of camaraderie between the troops. They are stereotypical macho, football obsessed loud-mouthed males. The exception is Milburn, who is a quiet and thoughtful man, mainly in the shadows, so of course he dies first (one of the over-used genre tradition Dog Soldiers respected).
In addition Emma Cleasby is not convincing as Megan, the compulsive liar who befriends the troop then secretly leads them to the werewolves. She is overloaded with long, unnecessary speeches about werewolves, as if the Director thought the film needed the depth.
He need not have worried. Teenagers, Football fans, werewolf enthusiasts, horror addicts, comedy fanatics, all of these would love Dog Soldiers. It’s well written, with amusingly delivered jokes and has suspense, intrigue and drama. Dog Soldiers is now a rite of passage into the horror comedy genre. ‘Jaws, Alien and Predator with a werewolf twist’ said the critics. I can’t argue with that.
