User Reviews

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.

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!

As Robert Mitchum indicated when asked about this film, it was just a paid vacation to an exotic land and a few months or so of work. He is the former head of a world organization trying to stop drug trafficking and when he is contacted by aging drug lord Keye Luke, he is brought back into the organization to privately bring it down. That means that there's lots of shootouts chase sequences, kidnappings and threatening phone calls, but that's pretty much all it is, a B action picture with a weak story line.

Mitchum is joined by veteran actors Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen and Bradford Dillman, and it's difficult not to laugh when you see silver haired Nielsen pre-"Police Squad". But this is the type of film that movie studios were shoving out by the dozens for neighborhood theaters in the 1970's and 80's, and like the majority of those, there is not a lot of time for character development or something that will make sense to the audience.

We're supposed to just take the writer's word that organizations like this really exist and operate like this one does. A bit of comedy is provided by an Asian actor who overuses American slang and refers to "Operation Juliana" by asking sardonically, "As in the queen?" A scene with two Australian soldiers and Mitchum is set up for Mitchum to insult them to get laughs but it just lays there. At 90 minutes, it moves by at a speedy pace, but it's one of those films that you'll forget you saw shortly afterwards.

Set mainly in Amsterdam and Hong Kong this is a film with a lot of plot but I went along for the ride and enjoyed it. Partly due to the professional acting from Robert Mitchum, Keye Luke, Bradford Dillman and Richard Egan. Partly due to looking out for Hong Kong action stars like Biao Yuen, Wah Yuen and Ching-Ying Lam. Partly due to the good locations. Partly due to some of the set pieces, especially the green house destruction towards the end. The story is not that original and the villains were easy to spot but for a 1970's crime and drugs busting story you could do worse.

It is funny that when you see an older film with Leslie Nielsen it is now difficult to take the character he is playing seriously. It surely is.

When Robert Mitchum read the script for one of his earlier movies ("Second Chance"), he said it sounded like it was written by the producer's grandchildren. The same could be said about "The Amsterdam Kill".

Bob shows his years, as does his drinking buddy Richard Egan. Mind you, these guys had been in some great movies and must have sensed the lack of polish on this one.

Mitchum plays Quinlan, a disgraced former government agent who comes in from the cold when he is hired by the head of a major Chinese drug cartel in Amsterdam who wants to quit the business. Quinlan receives information to tip off agents played by Richard Egan, Leslie Nielson and Bradford Dillman to destroy the cartel. So it goes with double crosses, double agents and doubling back and forth between Hong Kong and Amsterdam.

Bob and the boys do a lot of talking on telephones or just walking and talking.

Action sequences occasionally punctuate the talkfest and are spectacular enough, but strangely cartoonish. Dispensable baddies are trampled to death by a herd of fat Dutch horses, a car bursts through a houseboat into an Amsterdam canal, and a huge greenhouse is methodically demolished by Bob in a bulldozer. None of it is remotely suspenseful.

Somehow director Robert Clouse convinced Mitchum to jump into that less than pristine Amsterdam canal, although the film company did offer to pay for a tetanus shot.

Despite real locations, the photography is as pedestrian as your aunt and uncle's movie of their recent trip. It also needed a sympathetic score, not the hackneyed tunes employed here, and it needed far less talk.

Author Lee Server wrote a brilliant biography of Robert Mitchum, "Baby' I don't Care". He described how relations grew toxic between an irate 60-year old Mitchum and the Chinese film crew in Hong Kong. Server also summed the whole thing up positing that, "... a behind-the-scenes "making of" documentary might have been more entertaining than the actual confused, simple-minded feature itself".