Good movie but grossly overrated

Absolutely Fantastic

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It never ceases to surprise me to learn just how much lots of people seem to like explosions in movies. I have always thought that - aside from the admittedly seriously impressive Pink Floyd scored explosion par excellence from the finale of Zabriskie Point (1970) – once you've seen one explosion…well, the others are kind of similar. Which brings me to Codename: Wild Geese, a film complimented quite a bit on the basis for it having an above average number of explosions. While I fully agree there were a lot of them, it didn't change the fact that this was a very formulaic action movie with little interest value overall.This West German production was directed by Italian director-for-hire Antonio Margheriti, who was also at the helm for the two subsequent films which made up a loose action trilogy, namely Commando Leopard (1985) and The Commander (1988). For my money Commando Leopard was the best of the bunch, although that could be a result of it being the first of these I saw and so consequently had the most patience for. All films feature Lewis Collins in the star role as a tough commando team leader who quite impressively manages to navigate through the entire run-time of all three movies with a face like fizz. In this one he leads a group of mercenaries who are hired by the DEA to take out an opium production operation in the south-east Asian jungle. The rest of the cast is pretty good on paper with Ernest Borgnine as a shady DEA boss, Lee Van Cleef pitches up as a helicopter pilot, Klaus Kinski replete with upper class English accent plays a sneaky associate of Collins' and Italian genre regular Mimsy Farmer is also on hand as a civilian caught up in the middle of the conflict. Despite the promising nature of the cast, they aren't given anything very interesting to work with and so none really register performances that are very memorable at all. But then, this film is about explosions not acting, I keep on forgetting this.There are other things in it worth at least noting, however, my favourite scene for example being the car chase early on in the movie where Collins drives his car along the side of a wall while driving down a tunnel in an attempt to escape a tailgater – this is a genuinely inspired bit of nonsense which I definitely enjoyed. Later on, we also have a helicopter with attached flamethrower, which isn't as interesting as it sounds but it does sound great I have to say. And there also was a scene where a missionary is crucified, which was at the very least quite distinctive and memorable. But mainly this one really has to be recommended for those of you with a high tolerance for machine gun shooting, explosions, jungle-based antics, explosions, Lewis Collins looking constipated, explosions and scenes with explosions.

Woohoo! Another Antonio Margheriti jungle actioner, this one starring Lewis Collins (from Commando Leopard!) and Klaus Kinski (from Commando Leopard!) and Lee Van Cleef (from Death Rides a Horse etc) and Ernest Borgnine (from also good eighties action film Skeleton Coast) and Mimsy Farmer (from the Black Cat, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, that Pink Floyd film and other stuff). I'm knackered from thinking of all those films those folks were in. Goodnight! This one isn't as good as Margheriti's The Last Hunter, but then I'm hard pressed to think of a better action film than that, but it's on a par with Commando Leopard, suffering slightly from the lack of John Stiener being a Glaswegian, but then helped by a depressingly old looking Lee Van Cleef as a helicopter pilot and helped immensely by eternally middle aged and jolly Ernest Borgnine. These guys are all on hand to help out Lewis Collins, a soldier heading for the jungle of some country I couldn't quite figure out in order to destroy drug factories! Collins and Cleef and a few other jungle warfare guys head off for the jungle and start blowing the absolute crap out of everything, picking up a junky Mimsy Farmer on the way. She's doesn't have too much to do in this one I'm afraid, but then again it's all about the action and less about the acting, so let's get to the bit where I mention the helicopter with the flamethrower attached.Near the end the get double crossed by either Borgnine or Kinski (you guess which one) and can only escape by wasting scores of bad guys and countryside with a flame thrower attached to a helicopter. Margheriti gets to break out his famous miniature sets at this point (and also during a really daft car chase near the start) but you can't mark the guy down for effort.This is yet another impossible-not-to-enjoy Italian trash film made by one of Taratino's heroes. I wonder why he never takes the hint and makes a decent action film with barely any dialogue?

This was the first of a German-produced war trilogy by leading Italian "Euro-Cult" exponent Margheriti; I actually watched the follow-ups (COMMANDO LEOPARD [1985] and THE COMMANDER [1988]) prior to it but, as often happens, the original is still the best (if still not saying very much in this case). To begin with, it has the best cast: Lewis Collins (star of all three films), Lee Van Cleef and Klaus Kinski (who also turn up in the third and second entry respectively, the latter in a different role since he dies here), Ernest Borgnine, Mimsy Farmer and even that "Euro-Cult" stalwart noted for his resemblance to Peter Lorre i.e. Luciano Pigozzi aka Alan Collins, albeit uncredited (he did similar duties, again playing someone else, in one of the sequels). The title would seem to aspire towards a cut-rate version of THE WILD GEESE (1978), itself followed by an inferior (and entirely unrelated) second helping a year after this one; anyway, the war we are dealing with here is not strategic but moral – since the mission involves annihilating an opium compound deep into the jungles of the Far East (thankfully, we are spared the sight of slithering reptiles which is usually obligatory with this type of setting, and one of the sequels did in fact have such a scene). Collins is the tough leader of a crack squad who typically rubs his men the wrong way but eventually earns their respect; the aging Cleef is a helicopter pilot(!) who took the job in exchange for a prison sentence hanging over his head (besides, he can handle himself on a battlefield); Kinski and Borgnine are, ostensibly, the men who oversee the plan and put it in motion respectively…but the former, along with Collins' own superior, are revealed to have ulterior motives (incidentally, the hero's own son had lost his life to drugs); Farmer and Pigozzi, then, are people the team meets on the way – she is a journalist captured and rendered a junkie by the native militia later freed by Collins, and he a priest who also administers medicine to the wounded but winds up literally crucified for his beliefs. The film emerges to be undeniably proficient in the action sequences (especially the scene in which Kinski perishes via flame thrower in a large fuel depository – a set which would actually be re-used in its immediate follow-up!) but is otherwise fairly routine, indeed clichéd; mind you, it offers mild entertainment while it is on (particularly the verbal sparring between Kinski and Borgnine) but is in no way memorable and certainly far below the work Margheriti could turn out in his heyday (though he had always been somewhat erratic).

This terrible film is indicative of the type of cheapo gung-ho style jungle rubbish all too common in the mid- to late-seventies. I was surprised to learn that the film only dates from 1984, when from the quality of film they used it appears to be at least ten years older. The plot is virtually non-existent, the action is risible and the soundtrack is perhaps the poorest quality I've ever heard, with music seemingly provided by one man and his synthesizer. Plus some truly awful dubbing. My friend got this film for £5 from the bargain bin at his village shop. He was ripped off.