The Amsterdam Kill

Waaaay after the golden age of hollywood, robert mitchum was still making films. Some good ones, and some clunkers. Here, he's quinlan, trying to stop the flow of drugs coming into amsterdam from hong kong, and points in the far east. Leslie nielsen is in hong kong, the public face of the dea. They are getting assistance from the locals; some of the information is accurate, and some is false, to set them up. It seems there's a leak... somewhere. It's pretty good. As we know, they can only stop so much from coming in; the rest face harsh jail time. Directed by robert clouse. He was nominated for two academy awards, for short films. It's okay. The story kind of marches along until the end, where all is explained.

Although not listed among favourites of cinema critics, this work, filmed primarily in Hong Kong and Amsterdam, proves to be a very competently made affair, with good performances by such old hands as featured player Robert Mitchum and supporting actors Bradford Dillman, Richard Egan, and Keye Luke. Mitchum, as "Quinlan", a sullied former agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, is hired by one of his erstwhile targeted criminals: Chung Wei (Luke), a leader of Amsterdam's major narcotics league, to discover who is murdering, on two continents, large scale heroin dealers. During the course of his investigation, Quinlan is re-hired by the DEA in return for supplying the agency, now under the aegis of his former boss "Odums" (Dillman), information concerning major supply locations serving Hong Kong's dope derby. As Quinlan attempts to assist both Chung Wei and the DEA, he discovers that sabotage of his operation stems from an unknown confederate, and he is made to realize that he remains less than popular with the drug enforcement administrators. The film is paced correctly by director Robert Clouse, who controls the many action scenes very well indeed, with his script spending exactly the proper amount of time filling gaps which might betray logic. It is a fair statement that dialogue is of above-average quality for an action production, with one remarkable monologue delivered by Mitchum in his character's Hong Kong hotel room as he propels the plot past a conundrum, a highly accomplished piece of acting. As there are no females in the cast other than extras, the complicated pickle in which Quinlan finds himself is not diluted by the normally obligatory romantic subplot, freeing an audience to concentrate upon a well-told scenario, incidentally marked by Dillman's strong performance and by the creative camerawork of Alan Humes.

Robert Mitchum was not terribly proud of The Amsterdam Kill, it was another of those films he did for the money and an all expense paid vacation to both Hong Kong and Amsterdam where the action switches back and forth. It's a cheaply made action thriller with not a whole lot going for it other than some good cast names.

The film was directed by one Robert Clouse whose main experience is from directing martial arts action features. The Amsterdam Kill was produced by a Hong Kong syndicate who kind of operated on the fly so to speak.

Keye Luke is a big Chinese drug lord operating in Amsterdam and he comes to former DEA agent Mitchum with a proposition. He wants out and for a nice financial consideration is willing to rat out his competitors. Nice business to be in. Mitchum left the DEA under cloudy circumstances and they reluctantly go for his deal.

But when things don't work out and bodies start turning up, especially when several DEA agents are killed, but Mitchum's left unscathed deliberately, there's no doubt a rat in the ratting out operation. But who can it be?

Some of the others involved in this testosterone film are Bradford Dillman, Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen, and George Cheung. Mitchum's main complaint was he and Cheung having to do a dip in the dirty canals of Amsterdam, no stunt doubles because he has some dialog as he and Cheung climb out of a car that had to go in the drink. He was sixty years old and understandably afraid of God knows what he might catch. Katharine Hepburn went into the Venetian canals in Summertime, but that was an accident that David Lean kept in the film.

As Mitchum said of himself that the folks in Hollywood thought that that bum Mitchum would do just about anything.

Robert Mitchum was a fine, fine actor--one of my favorites. However, later in life, instead of retiring he kept making films...most of which were incredibly poor. "The Amsterdam Kill" is one of these poor films he became known for in the late 1970s-90s. Now I am not saying ALL his films from this period were terrible...but most clearly were cheap and forgettable...or worse.

Larry Quinlan (Mitchum) is a disgraced ex-DEA agent who is approached by heroin kingpin Chung Wei (Keye Luke). Apparently, there has been a major gang war within the drug community and many people have been killed. Chung wants out and he says he's willing to give the DEA a lot of major drug dealers and their suppliers. Why he doesn't go right to the DEA? Chung is worried the agency has been compromised and he only trusts Quinlan...which is odd since he was thrown out of the agency for stealing! When the DEA follows up on Chung's leads, the first one pans out just fine...but the next two are complete screw-ups and the agency fails to bust anyone. What gives? Is Chung lying? Is some insider mucking things up? What's next?

In addition to Mitchum and Luke, there are a few other famous but down on their luck Hollywood actors in this one...Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen (before his career resurgence thanks to "Airplane!") and Bradford Dillman. I can only assume they needed money pretty badly to be in a cheapo production like this one. And, when I say cheapo, the titles appear really cheap and are hard to read...and the film just has a 'made on the cheap' look to it.

So despite looking cheap, is this any good? Well, it's not horrible...though the ending is ridiculously over-the-top and a bit silly. Plus the film relies too much on action and not enough on acting. Not a complete waste of time if you ecide to see it.



By the way, it doesn't ruin the film at all, but the film has some weird gun physics. In one scene, a guy with a machine gun shoots some folks tied into chair...and they go flying backwards like they were kicked by mules. Well, bullets DON'T work that way...and any sort of research would have revealed that to the filmmakers.

According to the trivia-section here, lead actors Robert Mitchum and Bradford Dillman both weren't very enthusiast to be starring in "The Amsterdam Kill". Well, if these men were still alive today, I would surely tell them they were wrong and that I had an awesome time watching this gritty and excessively violent late 70s action/thriller! It has a simple but engaging plot, a great cast & ditto director, outrageously violent scenes, and - most of all - lovely filming locations not too far from where yours truly lives. Amsterdam, that is... not Hong-Kong.

Robert Mitchum, as ex-DEA agent Quinlan, gets approached by Cantonese drug lord Chung Wei who wants out. He's willing to give a lot of incriminating information about the heroin trafficking activities between Hong-Kong and Amsterdam, but the DEA organization has more leaks than a teabag.

The plot seems confusing and unnecessarily convoluted at first, especially during the opening half hour and the constant switching between HK and Holland, but as soon as you figure out who's who and who's where, it becomes a very straightforward and undemanding action movie full of gunfire, chases, and executions. Two sequences are notably gruesome, with people tied to chairs or begging for their lives still getting mercilessly executed. The climax is also a blast, as Mitchum destroys a complete glasshouse farm with a bulldozer! Oh, next to Robert Mitchum and Bradford Dillman, "The Amsterdam Kill" also stars Leslie Nielsen. Since the film predates his slapstick-typecasting period, which began with "Police Squad" and lasted for the rest of his life, you might have to make a mental switch to take him serious as the stern (and most likely corrupt) head of DEA-Europe.