The Amsterdam Kill

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.

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.

Robert Mitchum is not one of my favorite actors. But here he plays a very cool role. The movie is very well done. You can recognise Robert Clouse's specialist footprint. Leslie Nielsen and Bradford Dillman both make two decent performances. The film is alert, full of action, we see a little Amsterdam, we see a little Hong Kong, there are some pursuits, many many shots, everything justified. What is missing? A beautiful girl! In fact, there are no female characters at all, it's an exclusively male film.

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.

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.