The Amsterdam Kill (1978)

Captivating movie !

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

THE AMSTERDAM KILL is an action thriller from ENTER THE DRAGON director Robert Clouse. It was put out by Golden Harvest and is an interesting east meets west kind of film, although not an entirely successful one when it comes down to it. That I enjoyed it is more down to that I absolutely love the genre and will forgive just about anything than it being a properly good film.An aged Robert Mitchum is the hero investigator looking into a number of drug-related deaths taking place in Amsterdam and Hong Kong. I suppose the idea is to do for China what Mitchum did for Japan in THE YAKUZA. His investigations take him on various globe-trotting adventures as he gradually closes in to the heart of the mystery while at the same time interacting with a number of supporting guest actors including Leslie Nielsen, Richard Egan, and Bradford Dillman. Sadly, most of these actors are in those 1970s-style supporting roles where they sit behind a desk the whole time. Some fun comes from seeing old-timer Keye Luke playing a master drug lord who becomes Mitchum's contact.Meanwhile, Mitchum teams up with a rather dull young Chinese guy played by George Cheung and the two have some adventures. There isn't any martial arts here, but there a few car stunts and fight scenes. I was surprised at how little action there is given that this is advertised as an action-thriller. The first half has a string of violent murders and the second half has some low rent action stuff around the Amsterdam canals. It's only right at the end that it really kicks off in some good large-scale greenhouse locations. Watch out for kung fu stars Yuen Biao and Yuen Wah, who have a bizarre little cameo that involves them getting trampled by stampeding horses!

***SPOILERS*** Drummed out of the agency, for taking kickbacks, former DEA Agent Quinlan, Robert Mitchum, gets back into action when he's contacted by Hong Kong drug kingpin Chung Wie, Keyes Luke. Wie want's to give Quinlin the names of those behind the Hong Kong to Amsterdam narcotic pipeline and those high in government, in both cities, who are connected with it. For that vital information Wie wants $200,000.00 a US passport and a one way plane ticket to New York's Chinatown where he can live out the remainder of his life in peace and safety.Wie's information does put a number of the Hong Kong drug cartel operations out of business but it soon backfires when rouge elements high in both the Hong Kong and Amsterdam DEA tip off the drug dealers. This leads to a number of Hong Kong policemen and DEA agents getting murdered in them being ambushed in a secret Hong Kong drug laboratory. Wie himself ends up getting murdered by the drug dealers when after taking off, from the Amsterdam safe-house provided to him by Quinlin, he's tracked down by them and drowned in his bathtub!Quinlin together with his former undercover drug informer and good friend Jimmy Wong, George Cheung, soon uncover how the drugs are shipped to Amsterdam from Hong Kong unnoticed; Their hidden inside flower pots where even the best drug sniffing dog can't detect them!Knowing that he can't trust the DEA Quinlin takes on, together with Jimmy Wong, the drug cartel with it's army of imported Hong Kong hoodlums singlehanded. The films exciting final takes place at a massive greenhouse outside Amsterdam where the drugs are secretly stored. Wild shootout with an incredible bulldozed demolition run, that demolished the greenhouse and about a dozen Chinese drug dealers, has Quinlin and Wong put an end to the Hong Kong to Amsterdam drug operation together with those running it. In the process the two top men, in Hong Kong and Amsterdam, in charge of the drug pipeline are forced-like cornered rats- to come out into the open and face the music. One ending up dead when his car is riddled by Amsterdam police and DEA Agents bullets and other, when he saw he's about to be arrested, after failing to blow his brains out-he didn't have the guts- just waiting to let justice take its course.

Robert Mitchum was not terribly proud of The Amsterdam Kill, it was another of those films he did for the money and an all expense paid vacation to both Hong Kong and Amsterdam where the action switches back and forth. It's a cheaply made action thriller with not a whole lot going for it other than some good cast names.The film was directed by one Robert Clouse whose main experience is from directing martial arts action features. The Amsterdam Kill was produced by a Hong Kong syndicate who kind of operated on the fly so to speak.Keye Luke is a big Chinese drug lord operating in Amsterdam and he comes to former DEA agent Mitchum with a proposition. He wants out and for a nice financial consideration is willing to rat out his competitors. Nice business to be in. Mitchum left the DEA under cloudy circumstances and they reluctantly go for his deal. But when things don't work out and bodies start turning up, especially when several DEA agents are killed, but Mitchum's left unscathed deliberately, there's no doubt a rat in the ratting out operation. But who can it be?Some of the others involved in this testosterone film are Bradford Dillman, Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen, and George Cheung. Mitchum's main complaint was he and Cheung having to do a dip in the dirty canals of Amsterdam, no stunt doubles because he has some dialog as he and Cheung climb out of a car that had to go in the drink. He was sixty years old and understandably afraid of God knows what he might catch. Katharine Hepburn went into the Venetian canals in Summertime, but that was an accident that David Lean kept in the film.As Mitchum said of himself that the folks in Hollywood thought that that bum Mitchum would do just about anything.

Although not listed among favourites of cinema critics, this work, filmed primarily in Hong Kong and Amsterdam, proves to be a very competently made affair, with good performances by such old hands as featured player Robert Mitchum and supporting actors Bradford Dillman, Richard Egan, and Keye Luke. Mitchum, as "Quinlan", a sullied former agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, is hired by one of his erstwhile targeted criminals: Chung Wei (Luke), a leader of Amsterdam's major narcotics league, to discover who is murdering, on two continents, large scale heroin dealers. During the course of his investigation, Quinlan is re-hired by the DEA in return for supplying the agency, now under the aegis of his former boss "Odums" (Dillman), information concerning major supply locations serving Hong Kong's dope derby. As Quinlan attempts to assist both Chung Wei and the DEA, he discovers that sabotage of his operation stems from an unknown confederate, and he is made to realize that he remains less than popular with the drug enforcement administrators. The film is paced correctly by director Robert Clouse, who controls the many action scenes very well indeed, with his script spending exactly the proper amount of time filling gaps which might betray logic. It is a fair statement that dialogue is of above-average quality for an action production, with one remarkable monologue delivered by Mitchum in his character's Hong Kong hotel room as he propels the plot past a conundrum, a highly accomplished piece of acting. As there are no females in the cast other than extras, the complicated pickle in which Quinlan finds himself is not diluted by the normally obligatory romantic subplot, freeing an audience to concentrate upon a well-told scenario, incidentally marked by Dillman's strong performance and by the creative camerawork of Alan Humes.