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Expected better with a cast including Rod Taylor and Adam West. The film seemed to lack a script or direction. Slow paced. It was watchable, just not very good.

As with the Italians, the Yugoslav film industry made quite a few WWII movies, always detailing the struggles of the "Partisans". Like THE BATTLE OF NERETVA, this tells of a major German offensive to erradicate the enemy and their struggles against the invaders.

It's 1941, and the Partisans are on their own. Marko (Rod Taylor), fresh from an education in America, returns to his homeland and discovers how brutal the Nazis really are. Instead of returning to the States, he stays in Yugoslavia and organizes a resistance movement. On the other side, we have Captain Kohler (Adam West, of all people) who discovers that his childhood sweetheart, Anna (Brioni Farrell aka Xenia Gratsos) is among the Jews he's transporting to the POW camp. Marko's men attack the boat, and Anna helps Kohler escape. She's taken by the partisans, though, and soon finds herself in love with Marko. The rest of the movie involves partisan encounters with Kohler's troops, culminating at a huge river battle a few months later.

This movie boasts a pretty decent international cast. Rod Taylor is pretty good -- but way too old -- as the vengeful Marko. Adam West makes a pretty good adversary, although his German accent fluctuates and is just as bad as Brando's in THE YOUNG LIONS. Peter Carsten (BATTLE OF THE EAGLES) has a large role as a tough, ruthless German Panzer officer. Branko Plesa, also of BATTLE OF THE EAGLES, appears a few times as a German General. Bata Zivojinovic plays Marko's old friend, who leads the partisans but really has little meat to his character. Brioni Farrell is great and beautiful, too.

The combat scenes are all very well done. They involve tanks (more modern, though, but any tank is a good tank), era-accurate fighter planes, extras and a lot of big explosions. The cinematography is wonderful and gives the movie a very bleak look. The musical score often doesn't fit the movie, but I liked it anyway.

Overall, not too high above average, but one of the best Partisan films I've seen so far. Worth renting, even buying, for an entertaining 100 minutes. The video from White Knight looks incredibly good, just as good as any MGM release of an older movie, especially considering that it was released in the early 1980s. 6/10 overall.

In 1941 Yugoslavia . Partisans and Nazi army fight in the hardest , most tragic and greatest battles of Yugoslavia , WWII.At the beginning of the film Partisans attack a German riverboat with a lot of Jews held by the cruel Nazis , there a German officer , Adam West , escapes thanks to a beautiful Jew , Xenia Gratsos . Adam getaways to carry out a merciless vengeance . Later on , Partisans attack other regiments without warning that lead to tragic losses the Germans , which infuriates the German commandant Peter Carsten , as he executes massacres , and punitive expeditions against innocent population . Partisans led by Rod Taylor counterattack which will lead to the utter failure of his partisan followers . After that , the partisans are ambushed during their retreat to Bosnia . At the end the Yugoslav partisans and Nazis battle it out a place called Hell River , taking place the major offensives .

Average WWII movie with decent but really miscast actors , rudimentary effects and it involves tanks, arms , ammunition , and fighter planes . It displays breathtaking battles with big explosions , chaos , hell , suffering , mayhem , fates , heroic deaths and a cast of thousands . An enough budget war movie lost continuity with US cut and bad edition . Confused and bewildered movie with poor action , though it has some spectacular as well as noisy fights , regularly made battle scenes , unrealistic developing , poverty-row equipment and a lot of of the German armored vehicles are really American , as the planes shown are not actually German planes but U P47S. Yugoslavia army provided soldier-extras , costumes , weapons , fighter planes , tanks , trucks and other vehicles they had access to . It includes a silly ski-troopers attack in which the German soldiers are ridiculously killed and a large line of tanks rolling through a ruined and debris-strewn village . It stars some known actors , such as Rod Taylor as an aging partisan against two nasty German officers : Adam West and Peter Carsten .

It packs an atmospheric cinematography and a passable soundtrack, though it often doesn't fit the action .The motion picture released on TV as Hell River and also titled Battle of Belgrado was middlingly directed by Stole Jankovic. The film belongs to a motley group of Yugoslav movies made in the 70s about WWI and WWII with big budget , international stars and produced during Josip Broz Tito dictatorship , such as "Battle of Neretva river" by Veljko Bulajic with Yul Brynner, Franco Nero , Orson Welles , Sylva Koscina ; " Veliki transport" or "Mission Heroes" by Bulajic with James Franciscus , Steve Railsback , Edward Albert, Helmut Berger; " The day that shook the world" or "Sarajevo" with Maximilian Schell , Christopher Plummer , Florinda BolKan ; and "Sutjeska" by Stipe Delic with Richard Burton plating dictator Tito , Irene Papas , this film was made for the 30th anniversary of this battle and considered to be the most expansive movie in the history of the Yugoslav cinema.

I consider my taste in movies to be quite traditional (i like stuff like Lord of the Rings), yet i have completely enjoyed the two biggest Yugoslavian war films, The Battle of Neretva and this. Partizani is a big scale war adventure about Serbian partisans and Nazis exchanging blows in 1941.

A triangle drama between the rebel leader (Rod Taylor), a reluctant nazi (Adam West) and an upper class chick (Brioni Farrell) is woven into the story, but it never gets in the way of the action. And there is plenty of it, involving planes and tanks. The equipment is unfortunately wrong, but the tanks manage to look a bit Wehrmacht.

I really liked Rod Taylor in this movie, he is aged but not tired. He carries the simple warrior role with his charisma. Adam West is more wooden but adequate, and Brioni Farrell is competent and never annoying. The musical score, involving a bit of Mikis Theodorakis, is good and sentimental in an Ennio Morricone way.

This is a high class, big budget film that shouldn't disappoint any friend of war adventure. Better than mediocre Hollywood, and one of the best to ever come out of continental Europe.

A Yugoslav raised in America (Rod Taylor) fights the invading Germans as a leader in the National Liberation Army, aka Yugoslav Partisans. Adam West plays a German captain who's sympathetic toward the Serbians because he's actually Austrian and in love with a Jewess (Brioni Farrell).

"Hell River" (1974), also known as "Guerilla Raid" and "The Partisan" (amongst other titles), is a Serbo-Croatian WW2 film that originally ran 3 hours on Yugoslavian television. This shorter version was released for other markets.

Loosely based on the true events, it comes in the tradition of "The Guns of Navarone" (1961), "The Heroes of Telemark" (1965) and "Hornets' Nest" (1970) and is similar to the future "Force 10 from Navarone" (1978) and "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976). Sure, it's not on the level of the better ones, but it's quite well done and not far off. The longer version is no doubt more compelling.

Interestingly, a few seconds of "Hell River" are featured in Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) as the fictional movie "The 14 Fists of McCluskey," an Italian flick Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) starred in because he couldn't get significant roles in America.

The film runs 1 hour, 42 minutes, and was shot in Serbia (Sabac, Lazarevac, Mountain Zlatibor and River Drina by the border of Bosnia).

GRADE: B-/B.