Commando Leopard (1985)

Thanks for the memories!

hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Antonio Margheriti was a director who knocked out many films from different genres depending what was popular at the time in the Italian B-movie industry. He made films in various sub-categories - science fiction, Gothic horror, peplums, spaghetti westerns, gialli, pollsters, a creature feature, a cannibal movie, various action flicks – you name it! Commando Leopard is one of the latter, an 80's action-fest set in Latin America about an evil dictator and his sadistic adviser in their war against heroic resistance fighters.Its story is very routine stuff really, that only serves as a platform for much explosions and shooting. But I would have to say that this is an above average example of this kind of thing. It has a decent enough cast, with Lewis Collins and John Steiner doing well enough as the chief resistance fighters and, better still, Klaus Kinski on hand for yet another turn as a bad tattie; in this case the psychotic military adviser who blows up a plane of children as part of his day job! What really elevates this one though are some very well crafted destruction scenes where we have a dam, a bridge and a train blown up in impressive ways but best of all is the aforementioned destruction of a passenger aircraft just before landing. This sequence really is very well executed indeed and illustrates that this is an 80's action film which has been made with a bit of effort.

This film was made after the success of the first film directed by Antonio Margheriti CODENAME WILDGEESE which also starred Lewis Collins and Klaus Kinski .This film has a much larger budget than the first film and it is much better, the special effects coordinated by Margheritis son Edoardo are very good.I would have to say some of the action set pieces are spectacular and well executed and would stand up in any Hollywood action production and i would highly recommend this film to action and fans of cult film it is produced by swiss producer Erwin c Dietrich.Also the cast includes John Steiner a usual face in many euro films and Alaln Collins ,Hans Leutenegger.

Judging by the overall look of this, it would appear that Antonio Margheriti was given a bigger than usual budget to play with for this follow up to his earlier Codename: Wildgeese. Although not a direct sequel, the two films share many of the same cast members from the earlier picture including Lewis Collins, Klaus Kinski and Luciano Pigozzi (in different roles) Well, I've got to say straight away that the ostensible extra budget really shows in the special effects department in this with some absolutely superb explosive sequences involving Margheriti's trademark miniature work, most notably during the opening sequence wherein a dam is detonated and even more spectacularly later on when a passenger aircraft is blown up as it comes in to land....awesome stuff!Regretfully, I must also say that the action scenes, such as those mentioned are sadly far too infrequent with the 'filling' in between them proving to be somewhat less than engaging in comparison.The performances are all fine with Kinski especially on typically snide and evil top form. Also of note is the soundtrack by the legendary Ennio Morricone which really lifts the action sequences up yet another notch.Overall then, whilst this may certainly represent one of, if not the pinnacle of Margheriti's work visually (and possibly budgetary), for me at least, this is most certainly not the directors best effort in the genre. That accolade would, in my humble opinion, go to the classic The Last Hunter for it's sheer entertainment value.

As a kid I saw CODENAME: WILDGEESE and was none-too-impressed. Since then, I've developed more of a taste for these Italian films and found that Antonio Margheriti is possibly the best of the bunch when it comes to action scenes. Bruno Mattei is a close contender (and no I am not joking) but Margheriti takes the cake for best explosion-filmer in Italian cinema. The airplane explosion at the airport about halfway through is reason enough to track down this movie. It looks completely awesome! Equally cool is a massive oil refinery/train explosion later in the film, not recycled footage from THE LAST HUNTER either! Also notable are a couple helicopter explosions and a huge dam getting busted.The plot is negligible and the acting and photography pretty routine, but the great cast and action sequences make up for that. Klaus Kinski is underused as usual, but appears to be having a lot of fun firing blanks from his M-16 and mowing down dozens of extras. The (Morricone?) musical score is pretty light and well-used for the most part, working well with the action scenes. However, Margheriti undermines the ending of the film with a completely awful song "In The War" which plays over the ending credits. This is pretty similar to the endings of a lot of his films from the time period, though it doesn't end with a freeze-frame oddly enough.If you're a serious action buff, you shouldn't go without this movie!