UK, 2021, 93 minutes, Colour.
Paul Donnelly, Christian Jenner, Diego Landaeta.
Directed by David Whitney.
While this is an interesting documentary, the title is completely misleading. It is about a group of mercenaries hired by the cartel in Colombia in 1989, training in the mountains and jungles for an attack on Escobar’s hacienda to eliminate him. In fact, the mission was a failure. The main helicopter crash landed informed in the jungle, necessitating a demanding rescue of the leader of the group, and eight hours climb down the Mountain. If the British sense of humour intended the title to be ironic because of its failure, this kind of irony was lost on the potential viewers, military types who wanted strong action.
Many documentaries into the 21st-century have been marked by the use of audiotaped interviews with central characters, material not previously available, quite abundant material in the number of hours of interviews. This is the case in such films as Joe Berlinger is Conversations with such serial killers as Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.
This documentary is marked by the amount of footage that the organiser of the mercenary squad, David Tompkins, filmed at the time. These are intercut with re-enactments of some of the action, especially the rescue of the leader, Peter McAleese.
Tompkins is interviewed in 2020, as is Peter McAleese, who is a good yarn-teller. McAleese tells his story at some length, step-by-step, focusing on the crash of the helicopter and his need for rescue and going back to the plan for the assassination, the role of the rival cartels in Colombia, David Tompkins and his getting a squad together, McAleese himself as the leader trainer, some of the other members of the group, some lax behaviour initially, strict discipline and training imposed. However, the mission was a failure, Escobar himself being shot by police for years later.
At the film had another title, it would be an interesting look at the role of mercenaries in the latter part of the 20th century, their personalities, motivation, eagerness to fight, huge payments. And, McAleese continued his story to the present, talking about his strict father in Glascow, testimony from his sister, images of Glascow, his Catholic background, and in later years returning to his faith, seen in church.
Because of the title and the failure of the mission many would agree with one blogger who dismissed it as a film about “a bunch of losers”.
