Soldiers Of Fortune Pc

[Glendora Starr]

AllI had to go on was his name, Horace Stretton, and we weren't quite sure where he lived. We believed he was from Illinois. I also had heard rumor that he had fought during the 1846-48 Mexican-American war. First I did some background research to actually understand what the war was about, as no textbook I had ever read in school talked much about it.

With a little background understanding of the conflict, I did a quick search online, typing in "Illinois + Mexican-American war." I was surprised at how many responses there were. I was able to read first-hand accounts from Illinois veterans at the front in 1846. If indeed old Horace had been there, he would've been lucky to survive considering the harsh conditions and rampant disease. From my quick online search I also located the Illinois State Archives Web site. I was hopeful they could help find out if Horace had really been there.

A trip to the state archives was easier than I imagined. I gave the reference number to the archivist and soon found myself reviewing reels of microfilmed Mexican War records. There was Horace! I learned everything from his rank and company to where he enlisted and where he was discharged.

I was disconcerted to read a note by the archivist that said: "Unfortunately the report originates from the 1881 transcriptions which have been found to be 'grossly inaccurate.'" Ho-hum. So I turned to the National Archive in Washington, D.C. and ordered a record of his military pension. I received it a few weeks later and his service was confirmed.

From my research I learned soldiers were given land rights upon their return (widows and orphans were, too). Land grant deeds left a huge paper trail and are stored in the Illinois archives. Maybe Horace took advantage of this.

I used up a few more vacation days with a return trip to the archives in Springfield, Illinois. There I found it on the microfilm! Horace Stretton's application for a military land grant. I could see his handwriting and find out his wife's name (we'd been spelling it all wrong all these years, it was Rosaline, not Rosalind). I also found out where the 160 acres was-and that it was complete with apple and plum trees. We located the general area of the site using a combination of old land grant maps (thank-you state archive once again) and a modern map. Then we drove there. It was now a new housing development. Sigh.

Soldiers of Fortune is a 2012 American action film directed by Maksim Korostyshevsky and starring Christian Slater, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Bean, James Cromwell and Ving Rhames. It was shot in Ukraine.[1]

As the film opens, Captains Craig McCenzie and Mike Reed are United States special forces soldiers on a mission to find Osama bin Laden in an unspecified location in the Middle East. Their mission quickly goes awry when CIA operative Carter Mason turns up independently, but with Reed already having infiltrated the settlement he is unable to extract himself and his cover is quickly blown. Captured by the locals, he is interrogated briefly by Mason, who threatens to emasculate him if he does not disclose the full details of his operation, but he is swiftly freed by McCenzie, much to the displeasure of the agent.

Four years later, both McCenzie and Reed have been dishonorably discharged from the army due to the influence of Mason and are running a struggling private security firm back in the USA. When McCenzie attends a biker gang-run poker tournament to barter for a loan to keep the pair financially stable, he witnesses several other players draw guns on the dealer, before it is revealed that the entire game was simply set up as a test for him, to see whether he has retained his combat skill. When he is offered a well-paid job aiding freedom fighters on a tiny, dictator-controlled European island he initially turns the offer down, but when it is explained to him that Mason is on the island as head of the dictator's brutal military, he changes his mind and he and Reed leave for Europe.

On arriving at a base camp close to the island, the full extent of his job is finally explained to him. The freedom fighters are poorly funded, and thus are sourcing money via a war tourism adventure called Soldiers of Fortune that invites wealthy foreigners to pay to join their ranks for the thrills and experience of a fully tax deductible adventure. To prevent them from risk of death, however, McCenzie and Reed have been drafted in to act as their tour guides and bodyguards, offering them a realistic experience of army life while ensuring they stay out of harm's way. Their five charges (Roman St. John, Sam Haussmann, Grimaud Tourneur, Tommy Sin and Charles Herbert Vanderbeer) are for the most part all self-made millionaires who each believe themselves in one way or another to be up to the task of professional soldiery. As the two Captains give them a whistle-stop training, the recruits - with the notable exception of St. John - all reveal themselves to be hopeless, though they do all gain a basic understanding of weaponry.

In no time at all the five and their escorts are dispatched to their first mission, but they immediately come under attack, resulting in the death of Reed along with the rest of McCenzie's unit. As the Captain and the five manage to reach relative safety, McCenzie turns on his charges, accusing Tourneur of arranging the ambush. Tourneur, a black market weapons dealer, counters by revealing his reason for taking up the holiday - he sold the dictator his arms but realised too late that his buyer had no intention of paying, leading him to crave revenge. Short of options, the group heads for the rebel base, where the tourists discuss their reasons for coming, Sin revealing that his psychiatrist has suggested that his addiction to the violent video games he develops has left him disconnected with real life and in need of understanding the realities of warfare.

Further treachery leads to a morning attack on the encampment, and while the five tourists make it to safety, they are all finally exposed to the horrors of war. While McCenzie returns to the camp to save the life of Cecilia, the woman who originally recruited him, the tourists opt to snipe at the attacking troops, which draws attention to them and results in the apparent death of Vanderbeer. As tourists and tour guide reunite and they flee the ambush, St. John directs them to a helipad attached to a mine complex, and his obvious knowledge of the terrain forces him to reveal that he is in fact a mineral trader and a native of the island and has only returned in order to arrange supply of the rare and valuable metal coltan. As McCenzie again separates from the group to converse privately with Cecilia, the remaining four again opt to launch an assault by themselves, this time resulting in their capture. In prison they are reunited with Vanderbeer, and though he initially plays innocent they rapidly realise that he is the traitor who informed Mason of the rebels' location; he reveals that he negotiated a deal with the dictator to sell the rebels out in exchange for money to replace his lost fortune, having lost all of his wealth in a stock market crash.

After McCenzie and Cecilia effect a rescue, the group arm themselves before splitting up. McCenzie engages Mason, Sin and Tourneur ambush Vanderbeer, St. John flees the compound while Cecilia herself is cut off from the men and leaves on a jet-ski. Haussmann sacrifices his life to hold off the rest of the dictator's private army, thus fulfilling his own reason for coming to the island - to die heroically, thus preventing his wife from gaining half of his assets from a pending divorce settlement.

In a lightning-paced finale, Sin kills Vanderbeer, McCenzie avenges himself on Mason, Cecilia is chased down by the dictator's daughter but succeeds in eliminating her also while St. John opts to eschew an escape to turn around and save Cecilia from the floating wreckage. Tourneur wraps up the final loose end by killing the dictator with a well-aimed bazooka shot. As the island's inhabitants party into the night, the five survivors toast Haussmann's sacrifice.

The film was given a limited release on just 50 screens with minimal marketing in the United States. After 2 weeks it ended its cinema run with a box office result of $38,898. The film was more successful in the Russia-CIS market, where it was released on 500 screens and earned $1,542,287 at the box office and in the United Arab Emirates where it earned $203,101 at the box office.[2]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 14% approval rating with an average rating of 3.29/10, based on an aggregation of seven reviews.[3] On Metacritic, the film achieved an average score of 19 out of 100 based on 5 reviews, signifying "Overwhelming dislike".[4]

Soldier of Fortune is a first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision in 2000 for Microsoft Windows. It was later released for the PlayStation 2 (as Soldier of Fortune: Gold Edition), as well as the Dreamcast, while Loki Software also made a port for Linux. It was digitally re-released on GOG.com on October 2, 2018, along with its two successors.[6] The player takes on the role of a U.S. mercenary as he trots around the globe hoping to halt a terrorist nuclear weapons plot.

The game, which was built with the Quake II engine, is notable for its realistic depictions of violence, made possible by the GHOUL engine, including the dismemberment of human bodies. This was the game's stylistic attraction and it caused considerable controversy, especially in Canada and Germany, where it was classified as a restricted-rated film and listed on the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, respectively. The technology creates 26 different zones on the bodies of enemies, allowing for vastly different reactions depending upon which one is targeted.

Soldier of Fortune is best known for its graphic depictions of firearms dismembering the human body. This graphic violence is the game's main stylistic attraction, much like the destructible environments of Red Faction or bullet time of Max Payne. The GHOUL engine enables depiction of extreme graphic violence, in which character models are based on body parts that can each independently sustain damage (gore zones). There are 26 zones in total: a shot to the head with a powerful gun will often make the target's head explode, leaving nothing but the bloody stump of the neck remaining; a close-range shot to the stomach with a shotgun will leave an enemy's bowels in a bloody mess, and a shot to the nether regions will cause the victims to clutch their groin in agony for a few seconds before kneeling over dead. It is possible to shoot off an enemy's limbs (head, arms, legs) leaving nothing left but a bloody torso. In the last mission there is also a fictional microwave weapon, causing the enemies to fry or explode, depending on the firing mode. However, nonviolence is a possibility, if the player is a good shot it is possible to shoot an enemy's weapon out of their hand, causing them to cower on the floor to surrender. The game also came with password-protected options to disable all gore and there is even a version of the game with the extreme violence permanently locked-out, titled Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version.[7]

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