Geheimcode Wildgänse

Given the actors, the era, and the previous reviews, I would have expected this to be even worse than the average Chuck Norris movie from the same period. I was pleasantly surprised to be entertained by a movie that's obviously a step above the average Chuck Norris movie from the era. Although it can't hold a candle to , for example, Predator or Platoon, from the same period, the acting is actually pretty decent, the script is definitely not too bad, and the characters come across as real human beings. For a bunch of B-actors, a low budget movie, and obviously a lack of some decent camera equipment, I think they've made the best with what they could do.

two major minuses: One: the music is kinda campy & cheesy and continuously detracts from the visible effort the actors put into to it. It might have been in vogue when Madonna made 'Vogue' but it's sooooo dated now. Think a drunk Vangelis on a Monday morning and you're halfway.

Two: The movie obviously suffers from not having proper camera equipment and not being able to make 'expensive' shots. Nowadays you can make a better movie with a cheap 200 $ drone camera..but of course they didnt have that back then. Although they DID have helicopters in the movie, they just never bothered to use them for any good looking shots. Cinematography: 3 out of 10.

But I think the acting is a LOT better then I had expected, and it's a shame this movie is relegated to obscurity because of it's flaws.

Code Name Wild Geese is one of those many movies that bases the plot around mercenary action in a jungle; actually, to be fair, given that every cheapo movie seems to have done that in the past few years, at least this was one of the first. (Is ANYONE really interested in mercenary-in-a-jungle movies?) Most of the action is perfunctory, predictable stuff. Lee Van Cleefe is wasted (as usual) in this; Lewis Collins does his hard man routine.

This movie wouldn't really be worth commenting on except for the chase scene. It's absolutely hillarious! Collins' character revs his car up in a tunnel when he realizes he's blocked in, and drives sideways, YES SIDEWAYS, along the wall of the tunnel! How does he do this? Well, aside from the fact that this is physically impossible, of course he doesn't... we're treated to a exquisitely appalling display of movie miniatures, intercut with grim expressions on Collin's face. It's priceless and worth the cost of a rental alone.

My review was written in September 1986 after a Times Square screening.

"Codename: Wildgeese" is a routine commando action film boasting an interesting (though poorly used) cast of international talent. Pic was shot in the Far East in Spring 1984 with working titles such as "Wild Geese Five and "Wild Rainbow", followed shortly by an uppercase British production "Wild Geese II", which ironically did not receive as wide a domestic release (via major label Universal last year) as this New World product.

Lewis Collins (who toplined "Who Dares Wins" for the "Wild Geese" and "Wild Geese II" producer Euan Lloyd) stars as Capt. Wesley, a mercenary who brings his international team to carry out a daring raid against drug depots in Thailand. Very predictably, the businessmen who are working with his boss, drug enforcement official Fletcher (Ernest Borgnine), turn out to be the bad guys.

Trekking through the jungle and endless machine gun battles are just the excuse for prolific Italian director Antonio Margheriti to display his usual topnotch explosions, bot full scale amd miniatures. For gung ho action and interesting storylines, he did a far better job recently with "The Last Hunter" (1980) and "Tornado" (1983).

Inadequate post-synching of dialog hurts the picture, with Klaus Kinski not even showing up to loop his own lines (he is given an inappropriate British voicing). Collins fits the part as a cool commando, but has grumpy acting looks as if he's just received a call from UA telling the James Bond role went to Timothy Dalton, so he's stuck in this Continental B-pic. Mimsy Farmer is properly shrill as a freed prisoner who's been forcibly turned into a drug addict, while Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine lend their formidable personalities to nothing roles. Margheriti's favorite actor, Alan Collins (real name: Luciano Pigozzi) shows up uncredited as a Swiss priest who is literally crucified by the baddies.

Margheriti has since completed a followup film "Commando Leopard", starring Lewis Collins and Kinski.

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).

Italian director Antonio Margheriti serves up another entertaining action flick. The film has a great international cast, great music, great action and some great model effects. Seek this one out and enjoy, if only someone would release a widescreen version in it's correct ratio of 2.35:1. Quentin Tarantino you did it for THE BEYOND now how about for this. I recommend the following titles if you liked this THE LAST HUNTER, TORNADO, COMMANDO LEOPARD, THE COMMANDER and COBRA MISSION.