Shadow Company

Shadow Company (2006)

This was an interesting movie about modern mercenaries. They are now known as "security consultants," "private contractors," "private security company" and so on but they are basically mercenaries. Although the word mercenary shares roots with anything from mercy to merchandise, it has negative connotations because a "mercenary" works for a wage while a soldier is serving their country. An interesting fact that this film illustrates is that soldiers really are "serving" their country because they're not getting paid what their service is actually worth on the free market.

According to the film it costs about $25,000 a month to have a soldier in Iraq but I doubt that the soldier sees all that much of it. In contrast, a mercenary in the film said that some of them are getting as much as $1,000 a day. I would assume that is for high risk work and may also be an exaggeration. But I know that there are security consultants who train the US military who have relatively safe jobs that are paid well. As a soldier told me, if a husband and wife who both served in the military went back to Iraq as security consultants they could both very easily make $80,000 a year to have a combined salary of $160,000.

At any rate, American soldiers should be thanked for service to their country because they have often followed the example of Christ by serving others with little expectation of material/economic rewards. That is to say, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:13