I watched a very interesting documentary called Shadow Company the other night. It’s all about the rise of Private Military Contractors, or Mercenaries as they’ve been better known throughout history. It loosely follows the story of one young British guy joining a mercenary company and getting shipped out to Iraq. In between the narrative there are interviews with people from all over the mercenary world; active guys, heads of companies and retired guys. The overall design of the film is very slick and all the captions and neat on screen displays are very well designed. It also has some brief forays into animation, being used to humourlessly describe the different types of mercenary and tactical situations.

The core of the film is why do these man do it? and the big question of what drives a man to fight, for money, if not for his own country? Is it even right to fight for money if you don’t have a cause? There is also an underlying issue that mercenaries are not governed by any law except general Human Rights conventions. Under the “new” Iraqi law, no contractor can be charged with any crime. Now that doesn’t seem right…