La Dernière Grenade

Surely the worst film that any of the three British stars ever made? Any two of them together would normally be enough to suggest a good film, the trio surely a guarantee? And there are several very dependable supporting actors. But all that is commendable about TLG are the locations.

Other reviewers have already expressed various criticisms. Additionally one might mention Baker's team finding Thompson's village deserted and awaiting his gang's return - wandering around in the open and so highly vulnerable.

I suppose that the frustrated Blackman was attracted to Baker because of the combination of his machismo and his vulnerability as a hospital patient? If he had TB, surely it was unwise for her to become intimate with him because the bacteria can be spread through close contact. The romantic interlude halfway through the film was disruptive to the main plot, such as it was.

A very big disappointment.

Having appeared in films such as 'The Great Escape', 'Guns at Batasi', 'Flight of the Phoenix' and 'Dr. Dolittle', as well as making his directorial debut in 'Oh! What a Lovely War', Dickie Attenborough continued to act in films like this one in between directing his own. This was made just before he directed 'Young Winston'.

It is almost impossible to understand what is going on in this film and why certain characters are behaving the way they do. Alex Cord is acting in a very bizarre manner.

In the middle of the film there is a romantic interlude between Baker and Blackman which brings the film to a grinding halt. The ending is absurd.

I have always loved this kind of films made in late sixties and early seventies, downbeat and pessimist topics, speaking of anti heroes battling in combats lost in advance. This is not a masterpiece, but I crave for the charm of those movies. Honor Blackman's awesome character's name is Cathy...I guess a tribute to Cathy Gale, the famous TV show THE AVENGERS that made her a star. To summarize, nothing new, compared to other features of this era, speaking of mercenaries but I will never get tired of them. And there were plenty of those, batches, mostly grade B movies. But who cares?

While THE LAST GRENADE is perhaps the longest 90-minutes you'll ever spend on an action film, it actually needed to be twenty-minutes longer, right up front, since once-good-mercenary-turned-double-crossing Alex Cord is so deadly right off the bat, there's nothing to base things on when former partner Stanley Baker feels so betrayed...

Directed by Gordon Flemyng, the beautiful jungles of Hong Kong China are shown in revealing wide shots, not only to establish the location (when not in the busy city) but to show it off...

Meanwhile Baker and his men, including muscular Andrew Keir, token black Rafer Johnson along with Julian Glover and John Thaw, randomly traipse the jungle where Cord -- like Kurtz from HEART OF DARKNESS made famous later in APOCALYPSE NOW -- has become an eccentric kingpin surrounded by trained Asian foot soldiers...

So while there are some decent action sequences with Baker not only against Cord but the jungle itself, his third-act romance with British general's wife Honor Blackman (married to Richard Attenborough) kills the pace...

Leaving only a miscast Cord... speaking in a bad southern drawl and adorned in ironically mundane attire.. to be killed simply because, well, he's the villain. And Baker isn't.