Geheimcode: Wildgänse (1984)

User Rating:

4.7/10   

Director:

Antonio Margheriti

Writers:

Tito Carpi (writer)
Gianfranco Couyoumdjian (writer)

Release Date:

September 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Action | War

Tagline:

This is a corporation of businessmen... Their business is war. For them, the jungle and the city are the same.

Plot:

A band of mercenaries are hired to fight a Burmese opium warlord in the Golden Triangle area of southeast Asia. |

Plot Keywords:

Asia | Mercenary | Automatic Weapon | Drugs | Animal In Title

Cast

Lewis Collins	...	Cmdr. Robin Wesley
Lee Van Cleef	...	China
Ernest Borgnine	...	Fletcher
Klaus Kinski	...	Charleton
Manfred Lehmann	...	Klein
Mimsy Farmer	...	Kathy Robson
Thomas Danneberg	...	Arbib
Frank Glaubrecht	...	Stone
Hartmut Neugebauer	...	Brenner
Wolfgang Pampel	...	Baldwin
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Luciano Pigozzi	...	Priest

Also Known As:

Arcobaleno selvaggio (Italy)
Code Name: Wild Geese (International: English title)

Runtime:

101 min | Sweden:96 min (heavily cut)

Country:

Italy | West Germany

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Germany:16 (DVD) (cut version) | West Germany:18 (f) | Finland:K-18 | Netherlands:16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 (heavily cut) | USA:R | UK:15 (cut) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:PA (Manitoba)

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong, China

Company:

Ascot Film

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Tears of the Sun (2003)

Pretty Bad

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.