Code Name: Wild Geese (1986)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Really Surprised!

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Woohoo! Another Antonio Margheriti jungle actioner, this one starring Lewis Collins (from Commando Leopard!) and Klaus Kinski (from Commando Leopard!) and Lee Van Cleef (from Death Rides a Horse etc) and Ernest Borgnine (from also good eighties action film Skeleton Coast) and Mimsy Farmer (from the Black Cat, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, that Pink Floyd film and other stuff). I'm knackered from thinking of all those films those folks were in. Goodnight! This one isn't as good as Margheriti's The Last Hunter, but then I'm hard pressed to think of a better action film than that, but it's on a par with Commando Leopard, suffering slightly from the lack of John Stiener being a Glaswegian, but then helped by a depressingly old looking Lee Van Cleef as a helicopter pilot and helped immensely by eternally middle aged and jolly Ernest Borgnine. These guys are all on hand to help out Lewis Collins, a soldier heading for the jungle of some country I couldn't quite figure out in order to destroy drug factories! Collins and Cleef and a few other jungle warfare guys head off for the jungle and start blowing the absolute crap out of everything, picking up a junky Mimsy Farmer on the way. She's doesn't have too much to do in this one I'm afraid, but then again it's all about the action and less about the acting, so let's get to the bit where I mention the helicopter with the flamethrower attached.Near the end the get double crossed by either Borgnine or Kinski (you guess which one) and can only escape by wasting scores of bad guys and countryside with a flame thrower attached to a helicopter. Margheriti gets to break out his famous miniature sets at this point (and also during a really daft car chase near the start) but you can't mark the guy down for effort.This is yet another impossible-not-to-enjoy Italian trash film made by one of Taratino's heroes. I wonder why he never takes the hint and makes a decent action film with barely any dialogue?

"This is a corporation. Their business is war. For them, the jungle and the city are the same." You know, it's funny. You'd think a movie with a legendary cast filled with personal favorites (Borgnine, Van Cleef, Farmer and Kinski), produced by a legendary German producer (Erwin C. Dietrich), and helmed by legendary Italian director Antonio Margheriti, and filmed in very scenic locations, the results would be, well... legendary.Sadly, that is not the case. It's not that Codename: Wildgeese is bad, but it doesn't live up to the promise of its cast and crew.Kind of going along in the vein of The Dogs of War (1980), The Dirty Dozen (1967), the original Inglorious Bastards (1978), and the Eye of the Eagle series (the first one in 1986 and the other two both 1989), and, in true Italian exploitation fashion, basically fashioning an unrelated variant on The Wild Geese (1978) Codename is about a group of men, led by Wesley (Lewis Collins) who invade the "Golden Triangle" (the border of Burma, Laos and Thailand, apparently), to destroy the opium factories of a Burmese warlord. They are hired by DEA agent Fletcher (Borgnine) and his associate Charlton (Kinski) for the crazy, more-impossible-than-impossible mission that you'd have to be downright insane to even consider considering.It certainly seems dangerous, as the next hour or so consists of people shooting machine guns, guys in brown uniforms falling off guard towers, all manner of blow-ups, including many exploding huts, and Mimsy Farmer shows up as the token woman and also the token reporter that got trapped by the evildoers who put her in a cage. After a few more blow-ups and maybe a double-cross or two, the movie ends.The problem is, there is little-to-no character development. Even with a vast array of tools at your disposal to involve viewers in your movie, if you don't know who the characters are, or anything about them, the moviegoer begins to lose interest because you don't really care about their fate. So, I would say "Codename: Wildgeese" falls prey to "Lone Tiger syndrome", that is, just because you have a great cast doesn't mean your movie is going to be good. That being said, there are some cool aspects, such as a helicopter with a flamethrower attached to it, and some of Margheriti's classic miniature work, best exemplified in an early chase sequence when Collins' car is speeding through a tunnel, and then he cuts the wheel to the right and, shockingly, drives along the side wall of the tunnel! It's moments like this when Codename comes alive but they are few and far between.As an avid Italian horror movie fan, I'm much more familiar with Margheriti's Castle of Blood (1964), Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), which does have some action/war elements, The Long Hair of Death (1964), The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963), Seven Dead in the Cat's Eye (1973), Web of the Spider (1971), also with Kinski, and, while not technically a horror movie, the ultimate classic Yor: Hunter from the Future (1983) (a must see). Of his 80's action output that I have seen, it seems the finest is The Last Hunter (1980)...so see that if you want entertaining Margheriti action at its best.For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

If there's one thing I never understood about the "art" of European trash & exploitation film-making, it's the concept of dubbing actors that already speak English. Quite often I stumble upon obscure cult movies with great names in the cast, like Christopher Lee and Klaus Kinski, and yet for some incomprehensible reason their lines and dialogs are dubbed by atrociously articulating voices. I don't get it. It's a privilege to work with these actors, as far as I'm concerned, so the absolute last thing you do is alter their voices, right? Here in "Code Name: Wild Gees", the legendary infamous Klaus Kinski talks with the posh and eloquent voice of a seemingly elderly homosexual. The voices of the other international stars Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine luckily aren't dubbed. "Code Name: Wild Geese" is a typically early 80's European action movie from the hand of the versatile Italian director Antonio Margheriti. Basically this means it's a nonsensical but tremendously entertaining popcorn flick chock-full of explosions, testosterone-overloaded male characters, car & helicopter crashes and an ultra-thin storyline set somewhere in the jungle of a dubious problematic country. Margheriti shot three movies like this, together with the German producer Erwin C. Dietrich and largely the same casts. I have yet to see "The Commander", but "Commando Leopard" is equally good fun. Lewis Collins stars as the leader of a band of macho mercenaries known as the Wild Geese. They're kind of like The A-Team, except tougher of course and less inventive with artillery and vehicles. The team is hired by government man Ernest Borgnine to destroy an opium plantation in Burma. Commander Wesley takes the assignment rather personally, since his own since died from a drug overdose. Naturally, loads of infiltrations, double-crossing, collateral damage and violent shootouts ensue. There are plentiful of ridiculously entertaining moments in "Code Name: Wild Geese"; most notably a laughably fake chase sequence in which the cars drive sideways in a tunnel! It's really a stupid sight, especially since the scene ends with homosexually voiced Kinski saying "Isn't that funny?". There are also some very good action sequences and miniature set designs, including a freight train explosion and a helicopter blast. Lee Van Cleef stars as a hired pilot who's initially reluctant to join the battle and Margheriti regular Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre) plays a priest who provides shelter to the fugitive mercenaries. He also has the, hands down, coolest sequence when his character is found creepily crucified following a retaliation strike by the opium producers. The dialogs are horribly and actually quite redundant, but I guess they needed as much screen time as possible for Ernest Borgnine and Klaus Kinski. Their conversations are truly abominable.

I saw this film quite by accident. We had decided to watch The Wild Geese (with Richard Burton, et al.) but the person who went to the video store brought back this on accident, apparently thinking that there was some connection between the two films, which I suspect was part of the reason it has this name. There is no connection, other than the similar name and the fact that they both deal with mercenaries sent to some troubled region.I was rather downcast upon finding out this was not the right film, but kept my hopes up. I was very familiar with Lee van Cleef, and find that he can do a very good job, and I had recently become familiar with Lewis Collins from a couple good or decent films he had been in.However, even this hope was to be dashed. This film is really quite bad. The acting is bad, being either wooden or over the top and Lee van Cleef is nowhere near his best here. The whole plot is like a formulaic, brainless version of The Wild Geese, the production values are bad, and the action or chase scenes are poorly produced and sometimes utterly ridiculous. I wouldn't bother with this one and would check out the far superior The Wild Geese (a pretty good film) or even the latter's "sequel" Wild Geese II, which itself is mediocre but much better than this.