A mercenary, also called a merc, soldier of fortune, or hired gun, is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather than for political interests.
In Which We Serve is a 1942 British patriotic war film directed by Noël Coward and David Lean, who made his debut as a director. It was made during the Second World War with the assistance of the Ministry of Information.
The Dukes is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series based on the live-action television series The Dukes of Hazzard which aired on CBS from February 5 to October 29, 1983. Hanna-Barbera Productions produced the series in association with Warner Bros. Television, producer of the original series. 20 episodes were produced.
"The Adventure of Silver Blaze", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the first from the 12 in the cycle collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1892.
The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas is a 2000 American romantic comedy film directed by Brian Levant, written by Jim Cash, Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan, and Jack Epps, Jr., and is the prequel to Levant's The Flintstones (1994), based on the 1960–1966 animated television series of the same name. The film was developed and produced without the involvement of Steven Spielberg, the executive producer of Levant's The Flintstones (1994). It is set before the events of both the series and the first film, showing how Fred and Barney meet Wilma and Betty. The title is a play on the Elvis Presley song, Viva Las Vegas, also used as the title of an MGM musical film.
Simon Francis Mann is a British mercenary and former officer in the SAS. He trained to be an officer at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards. He later became a member of the SAS. On leaving the military, he co-founded Sandline International with fellow ex-Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer in 1996. Sandline operated mostly in Angola and Sierra Leone, but a contract with the government of Papua New Guinea attracted a significant amount of negative publicity in what became known as the Sandline affair.
Arnold Vosloo is a South African-American actor. He is famous for roles such as Imhotep in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Colonel Coetzee in Blood Diamond, Pik van Cleef in Hard Target, Dr. Peyton Westlake in Darkman II and Darkman III, Zartan in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and its sequel, sniper Jacob Broadsky in the TV series Bones and terrorist Habib Marwan in the fourth season of 24.
The Wild Geese is a 1978 war film starring an ensemble cast led by Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Krüger. The film, which was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, was the result of a long-held ambition of producer Euan Lloyd to make an all-star adventure film in the vein of The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. The plot concerns a group of European mercenaries fighting in Africa. The screenplay by Reginald Rose was based on Daniel Carney's unpublished novel The Thin White Line.
Kingdom of the Spiders is a 1977 American science fiction horror film directed by John "Bud" Cardos and produced by Igo Kantor and Jeffrey M. Sneller. The screenplay is credited to Richard Robinson and Alan Caillou, from an original story by Sneller and Stephen Lodge. Part of the eco-horror subgenre, Kingdom of the Spiders centers on a rural town in Camp Verde, Arizona which lies in the migration path of a horde of tarantulas turned aggressive due to pesticides having depleted their normal food sources. The film was released by Dimension Pictures. It stars William Shatner, Tiffany Bolling, Woody Strode, Lieux Dressler, and Altovise Davis.
The Dogs of War is a 1980 American war film based upon the 1974 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. Largely filmed in Belize, it was directed by John Irvin and starred Christopher Walken and Tom Berenger. In it a small mercenary unit of soldiers is privately hired to depose the president of a fictional African country modeled after Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Equatorial Guinea and Angola, so that a British tycoon can gain access to a platinum deposit.
"Husbands and Knives" is the seventh episode of the nineteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 18, 2007. It features guest appearances from Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Dan Clowes as themselves and Jack Black as Milo. It was written by Matt Selman and directed by Nancy Kruse. The title is a reference to the Woody Allen film Husbands and Wives.
Dark of the Sun is a 1968 British adventure war film starring Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown, and Peter Carsten. The film, which was directed by Jack Cardiff, is based on Wilbur Smith's 1965 novel, The Dark of the Sun. The story about a band of mercenaries sent on a dangerous mission during the Congo Crisis was adapted into a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall. Critics condemned the film on its original release for its graphic scenes of violence and torture.
Men of War is a 1994 action film directed by Perry Lang, written by John Sayles, and revised by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. It stars Dolph Lundgren as Nick Gunar, a former Special Ops soldier who leads a group of mercenaries to a treasure island in the South China Sea.
Company Business is a 1991 action film, written and directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring Gene Hackman and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The film follows the exploits of Sam Boyd, a former operative for the CIA who is reactivated to escort Pyotr Ivanovich Grushenko, a captured KGB mole, to a prisoner exchange in recently reunited Berlin.
Outlaw of Gor is a 1988 adventure fantasy science fiction film directed by John "Bud" Cardos. A sequel to Gor, it is loosely based on the Gor novel series by John Norman, but has strong plot and qualitative differences from the original 1967 book Outlaw of Gor.
The 65th Writers Guild of America Awards honor the best film, television, radio and video-game writers of 2012. The television and radio nominees were announced on December 6, 2012. Film nominees were announced on January 4, 2013. All winners were announced on February 17, 2013 at the JW Marriott Hotel in the L.A. Live entertainment complex.
The 1981 Seychelles coup d'état attempt, sometimes referred to as the Seychelles affair or Operation Angela, was a failed South African–orchestrated coup to overthrow the government of Prime Minister France-Albert René in Seychelles and restore the previous president, James Mancham, to power.
Ian Yule was a British born South African actor and soldier. He had a film career that commenced in the late 1960s and lasted to around the early to mid 2000s. Many of the roles he has played are that of a soldier. The films he has appeared in include Killer Force, in 1976, One Way also released in 1976, Golden Rendezvous in 1977, The Wild Geese in 1978, —Safari 3000 in 1982, City of Blood in 1983, and many more. He was also a stuntman in a few films. He also was a screenwriter and wrote some screen plays including Shamwari in which he starred opposite Ken Gampu. He was a well known actor in South Africa.
Giuseppe "Pino" Insegno is an Italian actor, voice actor, and television presenter.
Mercenaries in Angola are foreigners who participated in the Angolan Civil War on the side of the MPLA or the rebels, but were not personnel military of the interventionist states. Initially, the hired specialists were dominated by immigrants from western countries and "first world" states, such as the United States, UK, Ireland, France, Portugal and South Africa. In the 1990s, they were displaced by natives of the former Soviet Republics, mainly Russians and Ukrainians.
