Word: zangaro
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...camera follows one initially very apolitical character, Jamie Shannon. First he is on an airfield (labelled "Central America"), departing with his mercenary band after an unnamed mission. He arrives in New York, is nice to a small child, and then flies off to the West African state of Zangaro, modelled loosely on Uganda. He is doing reconaissance for a big, unidentified, corporate interest which wants to make sure Zangaro's repressive regime is stable so it can start carting off the nation's platinum at low prices. (For further references, see "Middle East...
Shannon--played as the stoic strong man in the Sly Stallone mold by Chris Walken--pretends he is in Zangaro to photograph birds. The ruler's men may be brutish, but they're no dummies, and Shannon gets the bejesus kicked out of him before he is deported. Back in New York, multinational enterprise knocks on his door again, this time to ask if he might not enjoy returning to Zangaro and overthrowing the government. And, of course, replacing it with a regime equally bad but tied more closely to the free world's engines of capitalist progress...
...also occasion for a couple of interesting minor subplots which end in a pair of murders. All the arms stowed away, Shannon and company--a small international band of warriors-for-pay bound by shared danger, shared skill, and shared thirst for beer--set sail aboard a trawler for Zangaro. They land late at night, eliminate a sentry or two, and then storm a garrison in a violent display of pyrotechnics. Shortly afterwards, justice triumphs--to say more would give the ending away, and probably reintroduce this question of politics...
African mercenaries: the very term is redolent of Bondish machismo memories. "Mad Mike" Hoare and his swaggering Fifth Commando punishing the ragtag Congolese army during the 1965 Katanga rebellion. Or perhaps Frederick Forsyth's dirty dozen in The Dogs of War, liberating the fictional kingdom of Zangaro from a maniacal, Soviet-backed African dictator-for a price...