Writers: Bobby Ming, Jobic Wong
Composer: Anders Nelsson
Starring: Sam J. Jones, Christopher Doyle, Bobby Ming, Craig Scott Galper, Han Chin, Lenny Bryce, Robert M. Delahunt, Sing Chen, Lilia Nguyen, Lawrence Fang
More info: IMDb
Tagline: The Vietnam war was over. Their war had just begun.
Plot: Towards the end of the Vietnam war, the US is running low on drivers for their supplies so they bring in a new lot of recruits and have to train them to survive in the dangers of war torn Vietnam. The recruits are trained briefly by an American officer but are quickly handed off to their South Vietnamese officers and are made to go out into the dangers of Vietnam without getting protection.
My rating: 6.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
This Hong Kong/USA co-production is wall to wall action and entertaining. You'll recognize Sam Jones but he's the only recognizable name in the cast. The group of Vietnamese that are recruited to do the Americans' dirty work are lots of fun. That translates to the rest of the picture, too, even though there's a lot of action and hard violence. In one fucked up scene the bad guys torture the good guys by having them tied up on the ground. Then they pour gas on a caged rat, light it on fire and let it loose to run around the prisoners and set them on fire. It's fucked up and hard to watch. I can't stand animal cruelty like that. That's just the beginning. The Viet Cong do all kinds of fucked up shit like in the acid on the skull in the video above and there's more than that, too. Fans of that kind of shit will love this. I was really surprised at how graphic it got. Film music nerds like me will get a kick out of the blatant theft of using Jerry Goldsmith's theme from NIGHT CROSSING (1982) and that one theme is used many times to great effect. It's not a great film by any stretch but it's clear the filmmakers weren't going for art. I'd say they succeeded in making what they set out to - a fun and entertaining flick.
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