BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

kreisbanaan Given the actors, the era, and the previous reviews, I would have expected this to be even worse than the average Chuck Norris movie from the same period. I was pleasantly surprised to be entertained by a movie that's obviously a step above the average Chuck Norris movie from the era. Although it can't hold a candle to , for example, Predator or Platoon, from the same period, the acting is actually pretty decent, the script is definitely not too bad, and the characters come across as real human beings. For a bunch of B-actors, a low budget movie, and obviously a lack of some decent camera equipment, I think they've made the best with what they could do. two major minuses: One: the music is kinda campy & cheesy and continuously detracts from the visible effort the actors put into to it. It might have been in vogue when Madonna made 'Vogue' but it's sooooo dated now. Think a drunk Vangelis on a Monday morning and you're halfway.Two: The movie obviously suffers from not having proper camera equipment and not being able to make 'expensive' shots. Nowadays you can make a better movie with a cheap 200 $ drone camera..but of course they didnt have that back then. Although they DID have helicopters in the movie, they just never bothered to use them for any good looking shots. Cinematography: 3 out of 10.But I think the acting is a LOT better then I had expected, and it's a shame this movie is relegated to obscurity because of it's flaws.

Comeuppance Reviews "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

Wulfstan10 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.

Gregster-5 Code Name Wild Geese is one of those many movies that bases the plot around mercenary action in a jungle; actually, to be fair, given that every cheapo movie seems to have done that in the past few years, at least this was one of the first. (Is ANYONE really interested in mercenary-in-a-jungle movies?) Most of the action is perfunctory, predictable stuff. Lee Van Cleefe is wasted (as usual) in this; Lewis Collins does his hard man routine. This movie wouldn't really be worth commenting on except for the chase scene. It's absolutely hillarious! Collins' character revs his car up in a tunnel when he realizes he's blocked in, and drives sideways, YES SIDEWAYS, along the wall of the tunnel! How does he do this? Well, aside from the fact that this is physically impossible, of course he doesn't... we're treated to a exquisitely appalling display of movie miniatures, intercut with grim expressions on Collin's face. It's priceless and worth the cost of a rental alone.