Year:  1977
Rating: 6.5

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Robert Clouse directed three of the more famous action stars in his limited career - Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon), Jackie Chan (Battle Creek Brawl), Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones) and now Robert Mitchum! Ok - so Mitchum isn't really an action star especially at this point in his life - 60 years old - but he certainly had his share of noir and Westerns. I actually like Mitchum more at this time of his life than when he was a big star in the 40's and 50's. Most of the films he was making at this point were not great and he often looks bored like a Ritalin kid in class but I like his frayed rough around the edges persona like a rumpled suit that never gets hung up. It is a perfect look for this film. This film was produced by Golden Harvest - which if you don't know was the premier HK film production company after the Shaw Brothers began to fade. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and many others became stars with Golden Harvest. Clouse must have been their go-to gweilo director with this and his Lee and Chan films.


Being Golden Harvest one might expect there to be a ton of action - both martial arts and shooting but that isn't really the case at all until the very end when bulldozer meets a ton of glass and the bulldozer wins. It is a straight forward somewhat realistic investigation into the drug trade. It drags a bit from time to time. In Amsterdam one of the Chinese drug heads (the great Keye Luke) has decided to inform on his brethren for a big payoff and a plane ticket to the USA and Disneyland. He contacts a disgraced ex-DEA agent who got hooked on heroin and is now living a sparse life. This is Mitchum. He is to act as the conduit between Keye Luke and the DEA. Mitchum takes the job as the story shuttles between Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Always a pleasure seeing Hong Kong circa 1977 with shots of the old airport, the race track, the harbor and the chaotic streets.


It soon becomes obvious that the DEA has a mole inside - Bradford Dillman, Leslie Nielsen or Richard Egan being the main suspects. After a few busts go bad everyone wants Mitchum out of Hong Kong and off the case - but the bad guys want to find out who the informer is and Mitchum is the chump. He calls in the help of a NYC cop - George Cheung - who I have seen in many films or TV episodes but never as big a role as this. And if you are sharp-eyed you will spot a few future Golden Harvest stars as minions at the flower plantation - Yuen Biao running through the mud, Chen Sing as the assassin, Billy Chan also in the mud I think and Yuen Wah and Lam Ching-ying (Mr. Vampire) who I admit to not spotting but they are in the credits. The five of them could have made a hell of an action film.