Shadow Company
3 May 2006, the wee hours
Shadow Company was a very cool film. The movie is all about the privatization of war. There are interviews with a slew of interesting people, including several mercenaries, a lobbyist, various intellectuals, and the creator of the A-Team. Over the course of the film, the entire private military industry is explained: how the industry came about, how it operates, who these mercenaries are, etc., etc. The film is thorough, and refreshingly spin-free. The film-maker really makes an effort to present both the good and bad aspects of the private military machine. The mercenaries that speak about their profession are actually surprisingly likable. The movie itself is very slick; it’s probably the best put together film I have seen at the festival thus far. It obviously had a fairly big budget behind it. This is a movie worth watching if you are at all interested in war. I suspect it will get a wider release.