A friend mentioned March or Die yesterday – the movie, not the Motorhead LP – and we got talking about Foreign Legion stories – being both well convinced that neither of us would survive one hour in the Legion, and yet both victims to the Legion’s mistique.

(alas, the trailer is not up to the quality of the movie itself – pity)

And so I went and watched March or Die, also known as La Bandera, a movie I had not seen in quite a while, and that surprised me for a number of reasons.

The plot in a word: the survivors of a French Foreign Legion unit, fresh from the trenches of the Great War are sent back into the Moroccan desert, to escort a team of French archaeologists looking for a lost city.
The local tribes consider the area of excavation sacred.
A violent confrontation ensues. Continue reading →