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Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer
DA lends itself to the action movie treatment, for obvious reasons, in ways that FID/UW don't. So there are lots of the former and few of the latter.
And in many of the movies, like Predator, where the guys are supposed to be SF, there is often nothing specifically SF about the plot/mission. I can't even recall if Dutch's team was really supposed to be SF, or just some super-secret squirrel Hollywood SMU, though the team that went in before and was killed by the predator were specifically called "Green Berets out of Bragg", IIRC.
The Wild Geese is more Central than Southern Africa, since the story is loosely based on mercenary involvement in the Congo in the 1960s. There was another movie, Dark of the Sun, made in the late 1960s, which also dealt with mercenaries in the Congo. Another mercenaries in Africa movie is The Dogs of War, based on the Forsyth novel and starring Christopher Walken.
I wouldn't necessarily call them "good" SF movies, but I suppose technically the First Blood/Rambo franchise qualifies. John Rambo is a one-man force-multiplier in the first movie, tying down larger numbers of local cops and National Guardsmen in his UW operation. And whatever flaws the last Rambo movie had, at least it showed the Karen rebels behaving competently in battle (no charging machine guns on horseback like in Rambo III) and avoided most Hollywood cliches by having the mercenary team also behave professionally and bravely.
Lawrence of Arabia probably qualifies as a UW-oriented movie, though to be honest I can't remember much about it. It has the tendency of epic movies of the era to be so long and aim for such an ethereal quality that I find myself drifting off. Many parts of Apocalypse Now also put me to sleep.
The Great Raid focuses mainly on the Rangers and the prisoners (and also the pointless plot with the woman in Manila), but does have some scenes which showcase the Alamo Scouts and the Philippine guerrillas. Through Col. Volckmann, among others, there's probably a more direct connection between modern SF and the Philippine guerrillas than there is between SF and the 1SSF, despite the official lineage. And I can't think of any film portrayals of the OSS OGs or Jedburgh Teams (unless maybe there was a British film which dealt with Jedburghs from the SOE side?).
Does anyone recall Attack Force Z, an early 1980s Australian film that was one of Mel Gibson's and Sam Neill's earliest? That movie dealt with a Commonwealth unit that did commando and UW missions in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies.
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Yes. I remember Attack Force Z, which actually, historically did exist and did operate some amazing missions in Borneo Sarawak and Sabah as well as some really sneaky attacks on cargo ships in Singapore harbour using specially modified kayaks and involved placing limpet mines on the ships and blowing them up.
Operation Krait if I am not mistaken. The first mission was a success. 2nd was a disaster as they pretty much got caught man for man and were either shot or beheaded in Singapore.
The Borneo operations were very successful but you guys lost one of your most productive submarines after dropping off a team from Z Force off the coast of Lahad Datu in North Borneo..it chased after a fleet of japanese destroyers, sank a couple but got depth charged and everyone was killed.
Not sure if anyone made it to Palawan as my memory is a bit hazy on this but pretty sure all hands went down with the sub.
You have to read a book by the special forces co-commander called "World Within" by Tom Harrison. His team parachuted out of aussie liberator bombers into a native head hunting village in 1944, built up a relationship with the head hunters and trained them to use machine guns and rifles as well as ambush and capture tactics.
He eventually set up a communications network back to allied command in Australia and was able to supply intel, weather permitting and had more men dropped by air to form a couple of teams, not to disimilar to your A-Teams with native head hunters.
They were able to capture a number of japanese for interrogation and eventually, towards the end of the war, led the last major head hunting expedition in Borneo, chasing the retreating Japanese out of Miri, in Sarawak, across the crocker range mountains into Sabah and the town of Tenom.
It's an amazing read and well worth investing in if you want to order it from Borneo Books in Kinabalu.
The movie is fictional though but loosely based upon Z Force out of Perth.
The z force guys also lost a lot of guys in dutch east indies as the japanese had captured one of their operatives and were feeding false information. Men after men were air dropped into the location only to be captured, tortured and killed. It went on for a couple of months before the australians realized what was happening.
You can get z force on dvd i think on sale via ebay.
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