Code Name: Wild Geese (1984)

When Will from The Exploding Helicopter podcast asked if I wanted to be a guest on his show, he suggested a few movies, and this was on the list.  As I had been looking to do more Antonio Margheriti, and get some more flicks with DTVC Hall of Famer Klaus Kinski, this seemed like the perfect choice.  As an aside, if you haven't been checking out the Exploding Helicopter site, and podcast, you really must--not to mention following him on Twitter, where he posts great gifs of some of the best exploding helicopters in cinema.

Code Name: Wild Geese has Lewis Collins as a guy who leads a rag-tag group of mercenaries in Asia.  USA DEA agent Ernest Borgnine contracts with Collins's crew to take out some heroin dealers in the Golden Triangle.  The problem is, they get all the way out there, blow up the drugs, only to have a henchman blow up their helicopter.  Not only that, but they discover another drug depot.  Now they need to destroy the second one, survive, and get home.  Oh, and there's also Klaus Kinski, he's never up to any good.

I had fun with this.  It wasn't the greatest, the characters weren't well developed, especially the star, Lewis Collins, whom I thought they could've done more with.  Also, despite having a consistent action quotient, it did get repetitive at times--how many times can you see guys being shot and falling from high up, or shimmying to death as they get sprayed with gunfire?  On the other hand, Margheriti's model-work was fantastic, including a great car chase, a train explosion, and blowing up buildings that he rendered from the actual structures they were shooting--in fact, this was so well-done, it took Will telling me they were models for me to catch it.  I also enjoyed Kinski, Borgnine, and Lee Van Cleef, who played the helicopter pilot.  I think you could do a lot worse for a low-budget military jungle actioner.

When I did the pod, I talked about a kind of Chekhov's Gun theory I have with Klaus Kinski: if you have Kinski in your movie, he has to eventually be a baddie, and that's what happened here.  It's not the Kinski on 10 that we love though.  He's kind of subdued, wearing jumpsuits, chewing up scenery.  Also, he's dubbed, I guess because his lines were in German in the original, and that tempers some of his punch as an actor.  I think as a Kinski enthusiast, it was fun to see him here, but it wasn't the full-on Kinski we love.

I wasn't familiar with Lewis Collins before doing the Exploding Helicopter pod, but Will being from England, knew all about him.  His show, The Professionals, didn't air here in the States, but I discovered in reading up on him on imdb, that he was up for the role of James Bond, I guess at the time Timothy Dalton got it.  After seeing Lewis Collins in this, I think he would've made a great Bond--or at least an interesting one.  I think Margheriti tried to tap into that here, combining a bit of international man of intrigue with grizzled war leader.  Again, like a lot of the character development, it was uneven, so we never got a full sense of either.

Anytime we get an Oscar winner on the DTVC it's great.  Usually it's Nicolas Cage or Cuba Gooding Jr., but Ernest Borgnine is another winner with a strong DTV CV.  One of the things I liked best about this was seeing his scenes with Kinski.  We know Kinski was very anti-Hollywood, and the Oscar is the greatest honor Hollywood can bestow on an actor, so I got the sense in watching him with Borgnine that he was like "Oscar huh?  I'm not impressed."  Borgnine for his credit was doing his thing, and even opposite Kinski there was a sense that he could care less and felt like he had nothing to prove.  One thing I appreciate about both actors is they treat acting like a profession, and if the money is right, they'll take the job and do their work.

Finally, because I was a guest on the Exploding Helicopter podcast for this film, I feel it's necessary to discuss the exploding helicopter action.  As I told Will, what impressed me here was how the exploding helicopter was integral to the plot.  Usually the exploding helicopter is a quick and easy way to infuse action into a film, but beyond possibly killing off a baddie in the denouement, it doesn't have any impact one way or the other on how the story unfolds.  When I think of movie tropes, the exploding helicopter is up there with damsels in distress and car chases as one of the most prevalent, but unlike those other two, for me it's the one that's tacked on the most, so to see it have that kind of impact on the characters was refreshing for me.

I found this on Prime, and thought it was a fun time.  It's not the greatest, but not the worst way to spend 90 minutes.  Thank you again to Will for having me on the Exploding Helicopter pod, and for everyone who hasn't checked out yet, definitely do.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087068

Laser Mission (1990)

I had heard of this movie a long time ago, but had completely forgotten about until reminded by my friend at Movies in the Attic. I knew it was vital to have this reviewed for the DTVC, especially since it has Brandon Lee before he died, and Ernest Borgnine.

Laser Mission has Lee working as a freelance spy-type dude who's hired to free Ernest Borgnine from the Soviets, or the Germans, or the Cubans, or some guy who likes to hunt... or... I don't really know, and does it matter? He's joined by a hot blond he thinks is Borgnine's daughter, and they travel to Trinidad and Tobago... or maybe it's Angola... or Namibia... or Grenada... again, does it matter? Hella explosions, sweet Brandon Lee martial arts: just a good old time.



Me and some friends watched this the night after seeing Lorenzo Lamas and Mystikal in 13 Dead Men (which I've reviewed below), and one of them couldn't take it anymore. He wanted to watch "something good", and we rented that James Bond movie Casino Royale on On Demand. I know I usually sound facetious when I make comments like this, but I thought Laser Mission was better. Other than the best foot chase since Point Break, Casino Royale had nothing going for it that I couldn't get out of a Steven Seagal flick. Laser Mission, on the other hand, was hilarious, and plot wise wasn't much more of a stretch than the yarn I was served in the Bond film. Just because the store packages the generic cola in a better looking bottle, doesn't make it taste more like Coke.

For a Dr. Rocket or Mr. Pibb, this wasn't a bad alternative to Dr. Pepper. I mean, it was cheap as hell; the plot made no sense; and I had no idea who anyone was or where in the world we were. One minute Lee's in a desert, the next he's in Trinidad and Tobago. But it hit it's spots. The main baddie kept coming back to life, and finally died when Lee rammed him into a concrete wall that exploded when he hit it. That's what I'm talking about. The movie also had it's surprises. There was a helicopter that managed to avoid being blown up. I was shocked.



Brandon Lee was pretty sweet in this. He wasn't used as effectively as I would've liked, with the director favoring shots of him hanging outside of a van with his mouth open firing an uzi, as opposed to him flexing his martial arts; but overall, he was good. He was as funny as he was in Showdown, which is impressive, when you consider how often these bad movie fall on their face when they try to make jokes (see the recent Zombie Strippers! for example). It's really a shame we only have a few movies with him before he died, because he'd have been a definite in the DTVC Hall of Fame after his career waned with Van Damme and Seagal's (you know it would've, I'm just keeping it real).

Ernest Borgnine was totally wasted here. He was given a crappy accent. I just don't get this fetish people have with making actors affect crappy accents. They sound stupid. Granted, some sound funny and stupid, which can be great to laugh at. But most seem to me as ways to ruin what could've been otherwise great appearances by great actors. Would anyone have liked The Wild Bunch better if Ernest Borgnine had a bad accent in it? No, they would've thought it a stupid move on the film maker's part. As an aside, Borgnine won the Best Actor Oscar in 1955 for Marty, even though I've always thought James Dean was better in Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, both from the same year.



One thing that was interesting about seeing Casino Royale and Laser Mission in the same night was the juxtaposition between the Cold War and espionage, and now the attempt to remake the genre with international terrorism as the monolithic bad guy. I guess there isn't much to juxtapose: whether it's big budget gritty new millennium fare, or campy low-budget Regan era fare, it's pretty much the same thing. I haven't seen Quantum of Solace yet, but I'm not too excited about the prospect either. I think the spy film needs an overhaul, and selling it as hard-edged because a guy gets hit in the balls a lot and another one cries blood out of his eye, isn't reworking it. These people need to go back to some greats like Le Samourai or The Maltese Falcon, neither of which is about spying, per se, but the suspense and action and cool characters are all elements we'd want out of a good spy picture.

You need to see this if you haven't just for the Brandon Lee factor. He doesn't have much work out there, but what he has is all good-- at least he is in them, in my opinion. It's a fun actioner with plenty to make fun of, but beware, it's very bad and very low budget. Be ready to crack plenty of jokes.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099978/