THE WILD GEESE is a legendary film for Britons of a certain age . Richard Burton and an overacting Richard Harris lead a bunch of mercenaries in to the African veldt killing lots of bad guys . It maybe doesn't have the high brow pretensions of something like ZULU but as a tough action adventure movie it makes you proud to be British . One can understand why film producers would want to do a sequel and certainly an audience would queue at a cinema to see noble clichéd good Africans being saved from cruel commie bad black Africans . The problem with this sequel is ...
1 ) It doesn't feature any characters or actors from the original film
2 ) It doesn't feature any battle scenes set in the African continent
3 )Even as a film in its own right it fails to stand on its own legs
The plot featuring a plan to abduct Rudolph Hess from Spandau Prison is ludicrous and despite the low brow nature of the original when it came to geo-politics at least there was an element of credibility to the proceedings even if it was to just set up the story . Here in the sequel the storyline tries to deceive the audience that it's thriller of great complexity involving twists and turns , double crosses and triple crosses involving nations states , double agents , criminal gangs and terrorist organizations . After a short while you'll be confused as to what it all means but the good news is that you'll have stopped caring at this point . And on the topic of geo-politics this is a British film which means the American anti-hero hates the IRA for some reason which is not something you could say about the average American in the early 1980s. In fact if it was an entirely American production the IRA would be the good guys
So in summary this is a film that cheats the audience in to thinking they're watching a film that's a sequel to a well regarded action adventure . It's not bad per se but it is rather uninvolving and most of the entertainment value comes from watching actors talk in very stupid accents
1 ) It doesn't feature any characters or actors from the original film
2 ) It doesn't feature any battle scenes set in the African continent
3 )Even as a film in its own right it fails to stand on its own legs
The plot featuring a plan to abduct Rudolph Hess from Spandau Prison is ludicrous and despite the low brow nature of the original when it came to geo-politics at least there was an element of credibility to the proceedings even if it was to just set up the story . Here in the sequel the storyline tries to deceive the audience that it's thriller of great complexity involving twists and turns , double crosses and triple crosses involving nations states , double agents , criminal gangs and terrorist organizations . After a short while you'll be confused as to what it all means but the good news is that you'll have stopped caring at this point . And on the topic of geo-politics this is a British film which means the American anti-hero hates the IRA for some reason which is not something you could say about the average American in the early 1980s. In fact if it was an entirely American production the IRA would be the good guys
So in summary this is a film that cheats the audience in to thinking they're watching a film that's a sequel to a well regarded action adventure . It's not bad per se but it is rather uninvolving and most of the entertainment value comes from watching actors talk in very stupid accents