YMMV / The Wild Geese

• Adaptation Displacement: The film is much more well known than the book. Hell, the book was only published when the film came out.
• Evil Is Cool: In Wild Geese II, for some Hourigan can be seen as this, mainly for his actor Derek Thompson's laid-back Faux Affably Evil Deadpan Snarker Soft-Spoken Sadist portrayal of the IRA terrorist and the fact he never seemed to loses his cool or raises his voice with the closest to that being a Tranquil Fury written on his teeth-gritting face during a training exercise after RSM Murphy smudges his shoes.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • The portrayal of the outrageously swish medic. In spite of being Camp Gay almost to the point of parody, he is portrayed as a brave and capable soldier. Even more surprisingly, the other soldiers all seem to know about his sexuality, and not one of them makes a fuss about it. The closest we get to discrimination is him being called a "faggot" once, by the drill sergeant who calls another man a "fuckin' abortion" ten seconds later.
  • Any attempt at seeing a racist Boer's side of things would be impossible today. Modern audiences would be strictly on the side of Limbani.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Right in the middle of his stint as James Bond, Roger Moore starred as Daniel Craig's version of Bond, ie a hard, cold badass. His first scene where he forces a drug dealer to overdose on his own product is quite unnerving to people used to his foppish, debonair Bond.
  • In Wild Geese II, seeing the usually charming, prim and upper-classily charismatic Stiff Upper Lip Edward Fox having a LSD-induced Heroic Breakdown is quite unsettling to witness (and depending of one's stance on Wild Geese II, also a case of Took the Bad Film Seriously).
• Love to Hate: In Wild Geese II, Hourigan is a slimy Soft-Spoken Sadist of an IRA terrorist who is racist against Arabs, trash talk towards the British military including boasting about his crimes against them and would drug his roommate with LSD so he could report back to his boss unnoticed by others. However, his laid-back Faux Affably Evil Deadpan Snarker charm and the fact he never raises his voice even when committing this aforementioned acts is quite enjoyable to view.
• Retroactive Recognition: A girl at the party is played by Suzanne Danielle, who would later be best known for playing Emmannuelle Prévert in Carry On Emmannuelle.
• Sequelitis: Wild Geese II was an In Name Only sequel that sank without trace.
• Unintentional Period Piece: A particularly swift example. Wild Geese II is about freeing Rudolf Hess from Spandau Prison. The real Hess died merely two years after the film was released.^note Though the ending having Hess convincing the mercenaries to return him to prison because he has no desire to be a part of modern society can be read in hindsight as Accidentally-Correct Writing, as Hess died by suicide (at lest officially, as conspiracy theories about it are still galore). Furthermore, following Hess's death, Spandau Prison was demolished, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine.

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