Jugando con la muerte

It's got planes it's got parachuting, it's got loads of stuff like that, but it's still a pretty dull film. It didn't really grab me, plus the story line for the most part was quite hard to follow. All the cast seem to do a pretty okay job on it but the pacing is quite bad and the plot is too mixed around. Probably of most interest to parachuting nuts.

This is a textbook, routine international "thriller" with a tossed salad cast and plot. Rivero is the blow-dried, muscular-fireplug leading the cast, playing an off-the-streets mercenary looking up an old friend... only to discover his ex-mercenary friend is dead. But that's just the start for Rivero. Von Sydow (as a Spanish Super Police Chief of sorts) has him arrested and then pressured into infiltrating the heroin smuggling ring that killed Rivero's buddy. Maud Adams plays a fellow operative trying to get in on the crime busting action. Then there's Chuck Connors popping up for a few scenes as some kind of schemer, only to be mercifully knifed and let out of the rest of the movie ("Thanks for the paycheck and goodnight, folks!") Even later, about an hour in, up pops George Peppard as a ruthless villain leading the smuggling ring, with an ever present grin and a cigarette holder that he chews on throughout. But lo and behold, it's more than heroin, it's become a chase after the smuggling of nuclear weapons grade material. And Peppard turns out to be yet another ex-mercenary that Rivero knows.

All this plotting plays out between required high-pitched action scenes. We get the spin-out car chase stuff courtesy of Remy Julienne, some martial arts action, a long and familiar ski chase scene, a mano y mano handgun chase-and-shoot, and more than enough pointless parachute diving than you can stand. It all finishes as expected, although the film-makers clumsily have Peppard disappear at the climax, mentioned only in passing in the wrap up (perhaps that final paycheck didn't arrive and Peppard told the producers "Adios!") Rivero and Adams are both quite dull and wooden. The storyline is murky as is the camera-work. The action scenes are mostly second-unit stuff that doesn't feature the cast, so they really could have come from, or be later plugged into, other movies. Blah.

An average Euro-spy movie dealing with a mercenary : Jorge Rivero who is hired by the Spanish secret police : Max Von Sidow to inflitrate himself a criminal gang that is smuggling dope throughout Strait of Gibraltar . As he join forces with female agent Maud Adams who is his colleague operative to bust the criminal ring . However, later on , they find out the gang is actually smuggling Uranium mineral for the manufacture of nuclear weapons .

A mediocre Euro Thriller with a lot of known actors delivering funcional interpretations in an action movie with no much interest. There are some decently staged action scenes as spectacular skii chases , skydiving , a car pursuit , karate fights , crossfire and anything else . It packs a lousy and discolored photography, as well as inappropriate and anticlimatic musical score from Daniele Patucchi and Pino Donaggio . Being middlingly played by Jorge Rivero as the undercover hero who becomes involved into a twisted operation by infliltrating in the dangerous band and take them down . Along with several popular actors as Maud Adams , Max Von Sidow , George Peppard , and the Mexican Susana Dosamontes who is mother of singer Paulina Rubio . Along with brief interpretations and small characters from some Spanish secondaries as Jose Maria Blanco, Pat Ondiviela , Jose Maria Cañete and Jose Antonio Ceinos .

It contains atmospheric cinematography by Hans Burmann, though a perfect remastering being really necessary beacause the film copy is washed-out. Shot on location in Catalunya , Barcelona , Casa Milá, La Pederera , Barcelona, Spain . This cheap motion picture was regularly directed by Jose Antonio De La Loma. This craftsman was a fine writer/producer/director who made movies of all kinds of genres . Outstanding in Quinqui sub-genre with Perros Callejeros I and II , Últimos Golpes Del Torete , Perras Callejeras and Tres Días De Libertad . He also wrote or directed Paella/Spaghetti Western as The Boldest Job in the West, Texas Kid , Clint the Solitary , Return of Clint, Blood at Sundown , Seven Pistols for Timothy . And Euro-Spy , Action and Thriller movies as Metralleta Stein , Razzia , Explosion, Squadron Counterforce or Playing with Death , Goma 2 , The magnificent Tony Carrera , Playboy to Kill , Target Frankie , among others . Rating : 4.5/10 . Below average .

My review was written in June 1984 after watching the movie on VCL-Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

"Target Eagle" is an okay international action picture, made at least a decade too late to have domestic theatrical use (in a market long since ceded to interchangeable martial arts fare). Pic played off at U. S. Spanish-language houses last year and has gone through several title changes since being lensed in Europe in 1982, such as "Playing with Death".

Jorge Rivero toplines as a most unlikely Jewish mercenary and globetrotter code-named Eagle ( because of a tattoo) hired by Spanish police chief O'Donnell (Max von Sydow, another ethnic casting stretch) to infiltrate a gang of heroin smugglers. A femme cop named Carmen (Maud Adams) is sent along to act as Eagle's contact. Punching up the storyline is a key subplot in which the same bad guys involved in transporting uranium oxide to make plutonium bombs fo sale to Libya or other aspiring nuclear powers.

With the usual stunts and modest-budget appeal to James Bond antics (with Bond veteran Maud Adams on tap), pic passes muster with lead players handling their own English-language dialog while minor players are dubbed. Credits are slightly anglicized, such as Jose Maria Blanco listed as one "Joseph White". Acting tends to be a bit wooden until an hour into the piece, when George Peppard enters as a ruthless baddie who was once in the Foreign Legion. Using a cigarette holder prop, Peppard is very convincing as a ruthless, misogynistic villain, opening up new casting ideas for the usually heroic actor.

(1982) Target Eagle/ Jugando con la muerte DUBBED ACTION/ ADVENTURE

Co-executive produced, written and directed by José Antonio de la Loma , centers on an unknown undercover spy who gets killed while sky diving invoking an investigation about the persons responsible and how. Along comes David (Jorge Rivero) another agent whose just come to Spain to learn that he's already been dead and buried, and agrees to go undercover to expose planes dropping cartons of drugs and plutonium to specific locations out of the country for the purpose of money, linked by ex-special ops soldier McFadden played by George Peppard who doesn't even appear until after a few minutes of the first hour and then 15 minutes later. This is the European equivalent of a well financed James Bond movie except that everything is pretty much second rate where it has lots of basic skiing, sky diving, and some unconvincing chase scenes and a heck of a lot of second rate acting with some unconvincing fisticuffs where the characters just swing through the air and the other person just pretends to get hit- almost like a "Spaghetti Adventure" but done so much better elsewhere. Movie also stars veteran Max Van Sydow as the person in charge of the whole operation, Maud Adams as another agent aiding the Max Van Sydow character and Chuck Connors who gets killed within the first hour!