City Enterprise, Hemdale, Libertad Films
James Coburn, Anthony Quinn, James Brolin, Ernest Borgnine, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little, Lindsay Wagner, Chick Vennera
Four American friends stuck in low paying jobs decide it would be easy to make a commando-like raid into a Colombian drug lord’s compound and steal $5 million. They succeed rather easily in stealing the money, but soon run into trouble trying to get back out of the country, as both the drug dealer and a small army of bandits each hunt them down trying to get the money. The chase is on, big time!
High Risk is a very little known adventure story from 1981. The reason it’s so little known is not because it’s a bad movie. Actually it’s pretty good. It’s a B movie, sure, but it’s got great adventure and comedy. With all the stars in this film, it’s amazing it’s not known better than it is, but it only ran one week in the theater in 1981 because another action film premiered one week later and sort of blew it out of the water. The other film was a little thing called “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. As a result, almost no one has seen or heard of this film.
I was impressed with this film. I watched it on Netflix “Watch Instantly” and enjoyed it a lot. I expected sort of a TV Movie thing, but it was actually a good 80’s style adventure. Excellent acting and a strong story, it was impressive. Everyone did a good job, so it’s hard to single anyone out, but Anthony Quinn was great as the bandito leader just trying to get his share of the money. But really, everyone was good.
This is well worth watching on DVD or on Watch Instantly, and I recommend it if you like the 80’s style adventure stories like the Indiana Jones and Alan Quartermain and other films of the decade. This has a similar feel, and the fact that the robbers are just regular guys is an interesting twist, since they obviously are not prepared for what’s about to happen. Somehow they thought this would be easy, just walk in, take the money, and get out. It got complicated in a hurry. If you have a chance to track this one down, it’s worth it.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
