Un killer di nome Shatter

I have almost no memory of this film, yet I'm writing a review. Go figure!

I seem to remember Stuart Whitman as some sort of hit-man in Hong Kong. It was entertaining and badly dubbed and fairly gory; the sort of movie HBO used to fill up their schedule with when they weren't showing more traditional features and before they went off the air at midnight.

My suggestion is to read the ten other reviews and, if this long-lost and forgettable Kung Fu/Spy flick piques your interest, rent it or buy a used copy.

Enjoy!

Kicking, shooting and beating aplenty in this Hammer/Shaw Brothers co-production starring Whitman as a hitman with a conscience. Not much here you haven't seen before, but Whitman is OK, the music is kinda funky and, while he doesn't have much screen time, it's always great to see Peter Cushing.

Shatter, an international contract killer, has been assigned to assassinate the President of a small African country and collect his fee from a bank in the Far East. On arrival in Hong Kong his life is threatened and when the bank denies all knowledge of payment arrangements, he realises he has been drawn into a dangerous game where there are no rules. Amongst the players are the Mafia and several foreign intelligence services and the stakes being played for are deadly.

Stuart Whitman as hitman Shatter looks suitably shattered and world weary. He does a fine job in a film that isn't a James Bond-style film. It's more of a gritty action thriller that benefits from aforementioned Whitman's presence, Peter Cushing ( who can make anything good), Hong Kong location, and Ti Lung's fighting. A lot of kung fu fighters lack Bruce Lee's brand of to-the-point, bone-crushing speed and dynamically charged school of hard knocks, but Ti Lung achieves this to a certain degree. I was impressed. Without the kung fu fighting and other attractions I had mentioned, it can be rather dull, lacks spark and muddled; it isn't great, but just ok.

Stuart Whitman was a good choice to play the burly and rough-edged hitman of the movie, but it's a pity that he doesn't get much of substance to do. The main fault is a slow-moving screenplay; after the first 20 minutes, it takes about half an hour before things really start to move again, and even after that point things don't really move that much faster. The various action scenes are only okay at best. Though the behind-the-scenes problems the movie suffered from don't make for any real glaring problems, there are still some notable holes here and there. However, the movie does give us a really scenic tour of early 1970s Hong Kong; if you are curious about what it was like to live there back then, the movie may be worth a look.

Long unavailable on home vid, this was just one of the many projects that cult maestro Monte Hellman ghost-directed. So when the good folks at Roan decided to release this on LD, I jumped at the chance to get a copy. At forty bucks, it was worth it. But I had to order off the Dollar Menu for the rest of the week.

It was a long-held belief that Hellman only directed a small portion of the film before being sacked and replaced by producer Michael Carreras. But in the running commentary, Hellman, upon seeing the movie for the very first time, was surprised to see that at least 80% of the final cut is his.

Though no "Background to Danger," this is a very passable B-adventure, with Whitman a fine hero/foil. Whitman's Shatter is another in the long line of Hellman loner-man-on-the-outside-looking-in protagonists. The film also bears striking similarities with the long forgotten "Karate-the Hand of Death" (1961)about an American Karate expert returning to Japan after the war and runs afoul of some mob types. "Shatter" is a decent way to spend an hour and a half on a rainy afternoon, and a find for Monte Hellman completeists.