Impasse

In Burt Reynolds' first starring role, OPERATION CIA, he ran and leapt throughout Saigon, Vietnam and a few years later, in another low budget exploitation flick only in the Philippines, he does pretty much the same thing... at least the best parts providing tons of action including his own stunts...

That's after a rather clunky yet still somewhat intriguingly offbeat set-up of Burt gathering a band of renegade army veteran misfits of all races and ages: from old tough white guy Lyle Bettger to equally tough old Indian Rodolfo Acosta to Burt's former OPERATION co-star Vic Diaz... and of course a pretty ingenue's always needed...

So Anne Francis is introduced as the daughter of one of Burt's connections... she's a tennis pro with a bizarre groupie in hippie girl Joanne Hahn, and yet, during the third-act cavernous treasure heist, there aren't any dames at all...

Except for Burt's real life Asian girlfriend Miko Mayama, with a few quick scenes up front and at the end... who's rugged and pretty enough so Francis wouldn't have been needed other than name recognition in a heist-import that works a lot better in the planning stages...

Which includes running down local weasel Jeff Corey, whose henchman in stuntman Eddie Nicart gives Burt's scoundrel-scavenger more dire urgency than his eclectic ensemble, that never really connects as a whole...

And although sometimes too strange for an action flick and too violent for mainstream, IMPASSE provided Reynolds a more clearly defined pulpy adventure than Sam Fuller's SHARK since there's a genuine beginning, middle and end here as Burt, with his clean-shaven Brando-looks and plenty of gusto, needed to have a lot more fun in the middle.

It must have been a frustrating time for Burt Reynolds!! A good role in"100 Rifles" and then the lead role opposite Anne Margaret in "Sam Whiskey" before he made this low budget flick.

Plot In A Paragtaph: Pat Morrison (Burt Reynolds) leads of group of salvagers to hunt for some hidden gold before World War II. Blackmail and betrayal soon follow.

Burt Reynolds makes the most of his role and shows great promise for more important roles. He emerges the movies real star "acting wise" and he is the best thing about this flick. So often the case during Reynolds early movies.

Reynolds fast-moving performance adds the movies only real excitement, and there is a surprise ending, which Hollywood would probably never pull now.

Burt Reynolds plays a leader of a salvage team attempting to recover gold treasures in corregidor hidden by the Japanese in world war II. Now in modern day, the ex-soldiers are sent to the Philippines to assist Reynolds in finding the gold. A lot of setbacks, kidnapping, blackmail occurs.

The movie was actually filmed in 1968 to be released the following January for a TV audience.

Look, I admit the hippie girl being accepted by her is a crazy subplot. It was the times in movies for crappy ideas like that (see my other reviews). But Francis shines brightly in every scene she is in. She was a pro who had been in films since like the early 50's. She and Burt Reynolds would later also work on his 'Dan August' series.

During the late 1960s and into the 70s, the Philippines was the site of quite a few ultra-cheap movies....and some of the most famous were the 'girls in chains' exploitation films. But they were not restricted only to this cheesy genre....and "Impasse" is proof there were more movies made there than just exploitation.

Burt Reynolds stars as Pat Morrison, the leader of a group of men who are in search of lost gold. It seems that as the country was falling to the Japanese in WWII, the US Army hid valuables...including gold. Well, a friend of Pat's knows where the gold might be...and so Pat organizes a group of men to help in retrieving it.

This is a decent adventure film and in spite of its humble location, Reynolds has a decent cast supporting him. The script also isn't bad. Overall, one of Reynolds' better films.