Another
good Italo-German action movie from Antonio
Margheriti – who I am convinced was probably the most
consistently-good Italian director during the 1980’s.
Lewis Collins is back to leading mercenaries on the move in Southeast
Asia. This time the cast is unusually good including Lee
Van Cleef, Brett Halsey (Cop
Game), Romano Puppo (Robowar),
Mike Monty (Raiders
of Atlantis), Bobby Rhodes (The
Great Alligator), etc. Anyway, Van Cleef has Collins go on some random
mission to locate a disc with all sorts of valuable crazy intelligence
data on it. It just happens that Donald Pleasence, a random government
official, hires another mercenary-for-hire Manfred Lehman to tag along and
make sure the data ends up in the right hands. Van Cleef isn’t taking
any chances, and since he is crooked and murders Collins’s other bosses
quickly, he places Romano Puppo in the group as well to make sure the
operation runs smoothly. Collins may not be too expressive but at least he
seems to figure out quickly who’s out to screw him, so the mission
continues with lots of double-crosses (gotta love the disc-swapping
scene), twists and turns, and of course lots of explosions.
The thing that sets The Commander apart from Code
Name Wild geese and Commando
Leopard is its attractive photography, good cast, and nice variety of
locations. Van Cleef gets most of his scenes on a comfortable sea-side
resort in Italy, while Donald Pleasence’s scenes are all shot in Berlin.
Meanwhile, most of the action occurs in Southeast Asia with lots of
colorful jungle photography, punctuated by plenty of bright red and yellow
explosions. Gotta mention the ending too – very clever, unpredictable,
and very fun to watch.
Well really there ain’t too much else to say other than honestly it’s
pretty damn entertaining, with its fair share of clichés and
one-dimensional characters, but its fast-paced and charming enough to make
the casual viewer forget its shortcomings. Tragically, this one was never
released stateside while the inferior Code
Name Wild geese is in bargain bins in every K-Mart in America.
Hopefully this’ll get the DVD release it truly deserves, along with "Commando
Leopard", which is only slightly better than this one.
Reviews by: Mike
Martinez (courtesy
of his website www.insane.nu)
