Eastern Condors

My Rating: ★★★★

Eastern Condors [東方禿鷹] is an action war movie from Hong Kong, it was originally released on 9 July 1987.

About

An American army officer needs to go into Vietnam to destroy an old bunker filled with weapons before the Viet Cong can get hold of them. A group of Asian American soldiers are part of the mission tempted by the reward of a pardon, $200,000 and American citizenship.

Cast

Sammo Hung (洪金寶) plays Tung Ming-sun
He is also the Director of this movie.

Yuen Biao (元彪) plays “Weasel” / Chieh Man-yeh
He is known for his martial arts skills on par with, but not as well known as, Jackie Chan. I understands he spends a lot of time here in Canada playing golf.

Review

Not quite a typical Hong Kong martial arts movie of its era given that it has a war setting.

It is showing its age despite the digital enhancements in the version that I saw.

The film has its main evil characters, some which they make as annoying as possible, but you know by the end of the film they get their ass kicked.

There are a lot of nail biting martial arts scenes from Sammo and other characters. Plenty of interesting stunts throughout the movie to keep everyone nailed to their seat. Also, a lot of explosive action with bombs going off and gun fights.

From what I recall there is only one major indoor set, most of the scenes are shot outdoors. The massive set was the bunker with all the missiles, it looked like a James Bond set plus some work with miniatures to replicate big explosions in the mountain.

There were some humorous scenes such as the caucasian guy and the flag pole, watch out for that at the beginning of the movie.