For a quick snapshot of the alternate and opposing directions being taken by cinema in the 21st century, it's worth considering a pair of films on release this weekend: "Johnny Mad Dog," by French director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire, is a provocative, intensely realist look at child soldiers on the rampage in a recent West African war. "Clash of the Titans," by French director-gone-Hollywood Louis Leterrier ("Transporter 2"), is a resolutely escapist look at ancient Greek myth as a superpowered mosh pit of gods and monsters.
One film operates under the assumption that there is nothing more fascinating, bizarre and terrifying — or more compelling — than the world we all inhabit; the other insists the opposite, that there's nothing in the least bit interesting about the real world, so let's spend our time in a magical one.
Sauvaire is a former documentary filmmaker, who — along with directors like Ari Folman ("Waltz With Bashir") or Paul Greengrass ("United 93") — has made the leap to fiction film, while nevertheless striving for a greater authenticity, that unmistakable tang of the real. In this case, that meant shooting "Johnny Mad Dog" in Liberian locations scarred by actual conflict and casting a bunch of kids who had fought in the child armies.