Nom de code: Oies sauvages

The plot - A group of highly trained mercenaries are hired to destroy an opium manufacturing plant somewhere in Burma. That's it! Oh well, sometimes simple is best I guess.

Whilst far from Antonio Margheriti's best work this film nonetheless provides some cracking entertainment, not least of all due to the great assembled cast here. The Professionals Lewis Collins plays the groups leader and is backed up ably by the likes of genre stalwarts Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Luciano Pigozzi and that great mainstay of madness himself, Klaus Kinski!

Plenty of gunfire and big explosions abound along with some of Margheriti's usual cool miniature model work, most notably in a great car chase scene towards the beginning of the movie.

Fellow fans of Godfrey Ho ninja movies will delight to see an uncredited Bruce Baron in the cast here to as a laid back member of the group with a predilection for alcohol(!)

For Margheriti fans and also those who like a bit of the old mercenary shenanigans you could do a lot worse than to check this one out.

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.

Antonio Margheriti (that's the linguine Anthony Dawson) directs this in-name only second sequel to "The Wild Geese", with ex-Professionals' Lewis Collins as the indomitable Commander Robin Wesley (a very masculine sounding name befitting the tough guy profile), and his band of rag-tag mercenaries as they venture into the jungles of Borneo or thereabouts for a supposedly benign mission to bust an opium operation. But the evil, double crossing Charleton (crazy-eyed Kinski) is playing both sides, and the group find themselves taking refuge in a mission with language assistance from expatriate American (Farmer) as they search for an escape route.

Glorious colour tones, stylish costumes and jazzy synthesisers give this jungle war opus the Armani makeover that was en vogue at the time. Collins' suave sophistication and stiff upper lip as he delivers painfully awkward dialogue is so artificial, it's cringe worthy. Ernest Borgnine looks sedated in his brief cameo, while Kinski, conversely, is so over the top, he's hilarious. Only Van Cleef offers some restraint, but he's a passenger. The set designers, special effects crew and pyrotechnic personnel showed flair with their multitude of explosions, and the bodies blown apart in gory detail give it that Euro-trash touch you've come to expect.

But while the action sequences are fluent and well constructed, and the general gist of the film is easy to follow, there's still an awful lot of stilted dialogue and overly intense acting. Perhaps as a box set with its younger siblings, this could be a cool if somewhat hokey trilogy. Nice try, but in spite of Collins' penchant for smoking stogies, no cigar.

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.

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?