High Risk (1981)

After buying weapons from a cameo-ing Ernest Borgnine, a quartet of Americans (James Brolin, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little and Chick Vennera) are flown into Colombia (Mexico) by a couple of ex Vietnam vets much more accustomed to this sort of affair. They plan to steal the ill-gotten gains of a local drug lord (James Coburn). Our protagonists’ main problem is that they are all perfectly unaccustomed to violence, have two brain cells going between all four of them (these are the kind of people who take a yappy family dog on their drug money heist) at the best of times, and may have read the word “planning” once on a toilet wall but were distracted by the drawing of a tit.

Still, after some misadventures and bad decisions our – ahem – heroes actually manage to steal a good five million dollars. Alas, two of them are captured very soon indeed (might have something to do with taking a whole night’s rest while actively hounded by the drug lord’s people; or not setting a watch), while the other two escape with most of the money but wake the interest of some local rebels/bandits/whatever under the demented leadership of one Mariano (Anthony Quinn, as we all know a member of every ethnicity on Earth that isn’t white in the US-sense of the word). Lots of tedious business ensues; Lindsay Wagner pops up.

Stewart Raffill’s High Risk is often listed as an action comedy, and if you’ve only ever read a plot synopsis or two and looked at the film posters, you may very well come to the conclusion that it indeed is one. Having actually gone through the experience of watching the film, I’ve rather come to the impression that the filmmakers were the same kind of bumbling incompetents their character turned out to be. There are a lot of elements in here that could by all rights only belong into a comedy - like the business with the dog, or Coburn having a little bull fight as an aperitif to a torture session. However, these are never presented in a way anyone would confuse with being funny or the film attempting to be funny. At the same time, it’s all just too dumb to be taken seriously by anyone.

And yet, the film presents its stupid ideas in so straight-faced a manner, it’s simply impossible to believe the filmmakers were seeing the joke there at all. Which is actually too bad, for an action comedy about people throwing themselves into the violent life without having the slightest capability or the lack of humanity needed for it bumbling through an action movie plot could be very funny indeed; in fact, given that this is about Americans doing the same in a Central American state, you might even turn this material into a pretty great political satire. None of this happens here, though. Instead, this is a film about a bunch of people who are very bad at what they do fighting against various groups of other people who aren’t terribly great at it either, full of dumb plot developments and underdevelopments, plotted so amateurishly, one might wish oneself back to the slickness of homegrown SOV horror movies.

The actors clearly have no idea what the hell this is supposed to be either: The lead quartet looks bored, Wagner mildly bemused, and Coburn just shrugs and shows his teeth while grimacing (his usual move when not wanting to apply any of his actual considerable talent). Quinn does of course chew the scenery like a madman, because what’s a guy to do when confronted with a project like this one?