The Amsterdam Kill (1978)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

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!

Everyone remembers the action climax in this one where Mitch boards a bulldozer and proceeds to demolish acres of glasshouses. It must be one of the most effective, dramatic, original, and excitingly staged action sequences ever put on film! Originally photographed in anamorphic Panavision, the movie is much less effective of course if truncated on video or TV. Some of the movie's other action sequences are also quite memorable, including a chase through the Utrecht flower auction and a car chase through Amsterdam that ends with its spectacular plunge into a canal. Other far-flung locations such as Hong Kong are also well utilized by our hero, Robert Mitchum, who is always actually on the spot! Unfortunately, the screenplay itself is another matter. As a peg for the action set-ups, the plot is satisfactory, but in other respects the movie tends to be over-talkative, sluggish, familiar, clichéd and banal. Its characters are pasteboard figures and its suspense ho-hum at best. The direction is even worse and is seemingly designed for TV with its proliferation of ugly close-ups and its almost total avoidance of drama, artistry or style. As it happened, director Robert Clouse was totally deaf. Yes, only in Hollywood would a deaf man land a job as a top movie director! Clouse hadn't the slightest idea how to direct his players. The best he could do was to employ assistants who could signal him if a player missed his cue or didn't deliver a line as written. Few of the cast members here were able to rely on their own resources and rise above the lack of direction. Only Leslie Nielson gives it a game try! Thus the movie's emphasis on stunts and special effects. Fortunately, the movie's action climax is something you'll never forget!

***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.