Wild Geese II

Plot synopsis:
Africa, 1977In a brief flashback to the previous movie, veteran British mercenary Allen Faulkner trains and then leads a group of 50 hired soldiers in an attempt to rescue deposed President Julius Limbani from the fictious African country of Simba. After initially being successful, the mission begins to fall apart, double-crossed and caught in the open, an enemy plane strafes Faulkner's men. With what few men remain Faulkner looks to escape the country in an old Dakota aeroplane. With only his best friend Rafer Janders is left to board the plane, Janders is shot in the leg and can't catch the taxiing plane. As the hoardes of ferocious Simbas are virtually upon him, Janders calls for Faulkner to kill him, which he regretfully does.London, 1982As the only surviving Nazi leader in captivity, Rudolf Hess (Laurence Olivier) has secrets that could destroy the careers of prominent political figures, secrets an international news network will pay any price to get. As the aged Alex Faulkner (Edward Fox) arrives for a meeting, Robert McCann (Robert Webber) is arguing with Michael Lukas about the delay of a planned rescue of Rudolf Hess. Faulkner is escorted into the office where he meets Michael and Kathy Lukas (John Terry and Barbara Carrera) where they show him a brief video tape and offer to let him name his price to rescue Hess. At first Faulkner thinks they are joking, but when he finds out they are serious, he tells them about the possible consequences of Hess's rescue. Faulkner refuses the offer but recommends John Haddad (Scott Glenn) to them as a substitute. As former Lebanese-American soldier-turned-mercenary Haddad avoids Palestinian hitmen in London. Later, network executives Kathy and Michael Lukas hire Haddad to free Hess and get him safely out of West Berlin.When Haddad arrives in West Berlin he stakes out the outside of Spandau as a jogger while being spied on. He drafts plans of the outside of the prison including guard towers and entrances. The next day Haddad joins a construction team and sneaks away to get into the prison guard entrance. Carefully eluding the guards by studying their timed patrols he drafts floor plans of the hallways and cell blocks. When he leaves the prison with the construction crew, Haddad is abducted by East German spy Karl Stroebling. Tortured into telling Stroebling about his mission, Haddad escapes and survives by overpowering the thugs and rolls across the street being barely missed run over from an oncoming truck as the police arrive as witnesses to the incident. While recovering in hospital, Haddad is visited by British Colonel Reed-Henry (Kenneth Haigh). Reed-Henry questions Haddad but to no avail; he leaves Haddad but suspects he is there to rescue Hess. Haddad leaves the hospital and along with Kathy goes to Bavaria to plan the mission without interference from Stroebling. Haddad enlists his old mercenary comrade Colonel Alex Faulkner to watch his back. Faulkner, a former British Army officer, is working as an assassin and is an expert marksman.As romance between Haddad and Kathy blossoms, the trio return to West Berlin to find that Reed-Henry will help Haddad release Hess. Once again Stroebling's thug's attempt to kill Haddad, but this time Faulkner helps him kill all but one of them. Meeting with Reed-Henry to discuss his plan, Haddad agrees to hand over Hess to the Colonel in exchange for help from Regimental Sergeant Major James Murphy (Paul Antrim). Murphy, an ex-warden at Spandau prison, informs Haddad of the prison routine and helps make the mercenaries look like British Royal Military Police. Stroebling offers to remove a contract on Haddad's life in exchange for Hess and the death of Faulkner. Haddad refuses and Stroebling leaves, frustrated.As the plan is finalised with the News network, Reed-Henry and Stroebling each believing they will receive Hess. Part of the plan involves a staged traffic accident so Haddad employs a fair ground wheel of death rider, Pierre (Malcolm Jamieson) to perform the deliberate crash. Attempting to (subjugate) Haddad into a vulnerable position using blackmail, Stroebling kidnaps Kathy. In exchange for guaranteeing her safety, Haddad must have a member of Stroebling's gang Patrick Hourigan (Derek Thompson) join the rescue group. Haddad and Faulkner are now joined by Kathy's brother and Lebanese mercenaries Joseph and Jamil. The group now including Hourigan are trained by Murphy. During one of Faulkner's fever spells, Hourigan substitutes Faulkner's medication with LSD tablets causing hallucinations. Hourigan taunts Murphy about an IRA ambush he participated in. Murphy shoots Hourigan dead, putting Haddad in a dilemma over Kathy's existing safety. Haddad enlists his final team members, Arab businessman Mustapha El Ali (Stratford Johns) and his employees, to do a couple of minor parts of the rescue. To appease Stroebling, Haddad offers Michael as extra insurance.Launching a coup that will change the shape of the world, Haddad must also rescue Michael and Kathy from the clutches of Stroebling. Michael creates a diversion for him and Kathy to escape but he is killed during the struggle when the guard retrieves his handgun and shoots him. Moments later Haddad kills the guards and rescues Kathy. The plan goes ahead as scheduled but Pierre is killed in the flaming wreck from the staged accident. Hess is sedated with an anasthetic, and switched with the look-alike corpse from the other ambulance and placed into a waiting jeep. At the rendezvous point at the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial Reed-Henry tries to intercept Hess, but discovers that he has been duped into killing Stroebling disguised as a guard. Kathy, Haddad and Faulkner take a drugged Hess to and from a soccer game with international passengers to their plane flight, and escape from being caught by murdering a customs officer. Reed-Henry confesses to his superiors that Hess has escaped with his rescuers and is nowhere to be found. He accepts execution via being shot with his own pistol from his superiors as his punishment.EpilogueHaddad, and Kathy and Faulkner take Hess to a hotel in Vienna, Austria where he awakens to find himself in an unfamiliar environment. Although he is offered the best hospitality, he insists on knowing why he was drugged while Kathy talks to McCann about the rescue and Michael's death. Hess, knowing that he is being exploited, overhears the conversation and tells Kathy, Haddad and Faulkner that he has no desire to be a part of modern society. Haddad and Faulkner try to talk him into accepting his freedom, but he insists on going back to Spandau to live the rest of his life. The following day Haddad, Kathy and Faulkner take Hess to the French embassy where he turns himself in. An article of a newspaper in the following days tells a story about a false rumor of Hess's escape.

Tags: cult, violence

Review:
Scott Glenn too returns a creditable performance, and Edward Fox steps into the shoes of Richard Burton quite seamlessly.
I have just seen this film, and l thought it was quite good, not up to the original but the story line was good, the acting was good, in fact it was a good film with a fantastic idea.Olivier and Fox add to the cast with Olivier doing his best to convey a hard part...I have read in books that this film was a "bomb" and a lot of folk don`t like it, but why has every film got to have a message, why can't people just see a film for what is should be a bit of fun, l give this film
He is too stupid to realize the most obvious of things, like that the girl might need protection.There is little of the actual mercenary action that was present in the original one.
This inferior sequel deals about a new group of the much-wanted mercenaries (Scott Glenn, Edward Fox, John Terry among others) assigned by a rich television network (Robert Webber, Barbara Carrera) to free famous arch-Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess.The film is packed with noisy action, thrills, suspense, tension and lots of violence .
The movie is dedicated to Richard Burton , he played the original film (along with Roger Moore, Hardy Kruger,Richad Harris, Stewart Granger), that was better than you would expect.Adding more details about those described on the movie regarding Rudolph Hess - very well played by Laurence Olivier- and his Spandau prison, the events were the following : Hess was privately distressed by the war with Great Britain, because he, like almost other Nazis , hoped that would accept Germany as an ally .
After the original with its star studded distractions; this only in-name sequel would see a small tag of mercenaries led by Scott Glenn hired by an American TV station to go behind enemy lines (Berlin, Germany) to take part in a very dangerous mission (freeing Nazi prisoner Rudolf Hess, who holds many secrets that some people would want to keep it that way)."Wild Geese II" is a hardy, but cleverly plotted and lavished boy's own adventure.
However don't go in thinking its going to be an all-out action assault like "Wild Geese", it's not.
Yes, Richard Burton died before filming this (he's only seen in the pre-title sequence that is footage from the first Wild Geese film---and really of no consequence to the sequel's story).
Unlike 1978's The Wild Geese which was chock full of story, action and even some moral values this apparent sequel comes up short on all accounts.
A plan to spring Nazi War criminal Rudolf Hess from his cell in Spandau prison by a team of Mercenaries is the basis of the movie.
Sadly Richard Burton who was to recreate the Colonel Faulkner role died before filming began and was replaced by Edward Fox who seems shallow in his performance.
Richard Burton was to star in this sequel to the original Wild Geese, but he died before shooting started.
Not that the first Wild Geese would ever rank among the great films of all time, but it was nicely done story about the comradeship of the military fraternity.These guys headed by Fox and Scott Glenn aren't mercenaries, they're heist guys.
The last prisoner in Spandau where all the surviving Nazis were contained, those who weren't hanged.Sir Laurence Olivier takes out his mitteleuropa Albert Basserman accent for the last time to play Rudolf Hess, former Deputy Fuehrer of the Third Reich who escaped the hangman at Nuremberg because of insanity and the fact he'd flown to the UK and was captured there.
It was a sad pathetic attention getting gesture by a very mediocre man, shoved aside by those in power.The premise of this story is that Glenn and Fox are hired to spring Hess out of Spandau so he could tell what he knew about Hitler to the world.
As a fan of the original "Wild Geese," I couldn't help but be crushingly disappointed by this disjointed, boring "sequel." Scott Glen goes through the film as if on Prozac and Barbara Carrera is strictly no-talent eye-candy.
As for Laurence Olivier as Hess, well, it looks like he thought he would reprise his embarrassing performance as Neil Diamond's father in the 1980 "Jazz Singer." This was just one more of the many child-support-and-alimony-payments-are-due roles that crowded the end of his otherwise distinguished career..
So Wild Geese II, Nearly every review I have ever come across regarding this film has been very negative and to be honest from reading a lot of them I don't even think many had watched the movie to begin with...
The original Wild Geese - these days a Sunday afternoon guilty pleasure classic that when looked at objectively is actually a fairly routine action film with a join the dots script and pedestrian direction.
Wild Geese II is very different from that movie, new cast, mainly new crew and made nearly ten years later - Wild Geese II is more of a spy thriller than action film.
One aspect of the film that I think it really shares with the original is that any of the main characters can get killed at any time although it is a bit more edgy this time around.Another aspect - in this case bad unfortunately is seeing another washed-up actor hamming for the alcohol bills, Edward Fox in this case who is just plain awful here taking over from what would have been Richard Burton's role.
The interesting thing is that bad as the two leads are they do not bring the film down as the rest of the cast is filled out with mainly good supporting actors - the standouts being Barbara Carerra in a pretty thankless role as the love interest, an actor who plays an IRA gunman and another actor who plays a British Sergeant-Major.
So overall not as dated as the original but still dated, better story and better direction but with a bad rep - I think this is an unusual case of a sequel surpassing the original but audiences seem unwilling to give it a chance probably because the first just wasn't that good to begin with..
The Original Was a Minor Classic.it was Action Packed and contained Plenty of Humour.Infact it was like a British Dirty Dozen With Mercenaries instead Prisoners.The cast Seemed to Enjoy themseleves.unlike this movie where most of the cast look like there going to fall asleep.Scott Glenn is so wooden in this Chuck Norris would of been better.the Action is very Rare.Only Fox Plays it tongue in Cheek.The Script isnt Great and the story goes nowhere.Dull.However Roy Budds Music Score is typically Great.4 out of 10.
'Wild Geese 2' Is a contractually obliged sequel to the original mercenary classic, Richard Burton Was due to reprise his role, but sadly Richard Burton, succumbed to a fatal brain hemorrhage, This time around Edward Fox, Fills in as the younger Brother of Faulkner, who is approached by news reporter magnates, who want Faulkner to free the infamous war criminal, Rudolf Hess,(who is incarcerated in the equally infamous Spandau prison, in Berlin,Laurence Olivier,) plays the aging Nazi.Faulkner Decline's the perilous operation,but Recommend's another mercenary for the impossible feat, John Hadad, Played By the ever moody Scott Glenn,who literally sleeps through this performance, Naturally Glenn Cant pull off this mission, so Fox Agrees, 'Wild Geese 2', is watchable but don't be expecting sheer brilliance,.
Roger Moore had the good sense to turn it down, instead we get Scott Glenn looking as though he's stepped off the set of 'Westworld', and Barbara Carrera as the token crumpet.
Whilst it was possible to root for the original Wild Geese as they rescued a democratically-elected Prime Minister, its impossible to care if Glenn, Fox and Carrera spring Hess.
An American TV network hires a group of mercenaries to spring the notorious high-rank Nazi officer and war criminal Rudolf Hess who is being held at Spandau Prison, East Berlin.
Haddad (Scott Glenn), an American mercenary heads the squad with another British mercenary Faulkner (Edward Fox).The mission gets complicated as other parties like the KGB and another mercenary group try to sabotage the plan, eventually leading to the lost of lives of Haddad's men and endangering the life of the target man Hess.This film was a bomb when it played at the cinemas because a lot of viewers had the misconception of what they would see and expected wall-to-wall, masculine battle scenes like those in THE WILD GEESE.
The other reason was that the leading cast was not super stars: Scott Glenn was an up-and-coming star then and Edward Fox's career had dwindled.
But having watched it again on DVD recently, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that it was not as bad as I thought it was.The film has a slow, step-by-step build-up that follows the "planning-surveillance-organizing-executing" structure, something like a "Mission Impossible" episode that fits very well with the plot.
Modern audiences may not like the lack of tension but viewers who are accustomed to espionage action thrillers of the 70's and 80's will not have much to complain about.Despite some negligible flaws, Scott Glenn, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier and the others all play their part well.
Surprisingly, the locations in East Berlin chosen for this film depict the beauty of the era, not the negative views Westerners used to have in minds about the Eastern block countries at the time.Despite the farcically contrived ending,WILD GEESE II is still an interesting, exciting, and well-executed espionage action thriller not to be watched as a sequel but a film in its own right..
The first had three top draw british stars this has one british supporting character  actor.with an american leading man who was basically wooden as hell.the acting is awful its slow moving with little action.its nothing like the first and has been made for a american audience no surprise it failed.this has nothing to do with the original.pathetic.
It has a lot of very good action and an interesting story as well as being shot on location in pre 1989 Berlin.
However, if you view this film without trying to make comparisons to the original, you end up with a thoroughly good romp through the very pretty city of Berlin.
Scott Glen is excellent as the mercenary who has a price on his head, Edward Fox is also good though he has done better.
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 .
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 .
Burton, before dying, was very enthusiastic about the filming of "Wild Geese II.
So it's ridiculous to imagine that Burton would have played the role played by his substitute Edward Fox (who plays his brother in the film) : it's true in only a few scenes.
Most of Richard Burton's dialogs are in fact delivered by Scott Glenn, who plays the leading mercenary in the final version.
But if Burton plays the role of Edward Fox, he's not the leader anymore and the story is ridiculous (like in the shot movie).
If you re-watch the film, you can see Edward Fox limping like Burton would have done it because of his surgery : Faulkner meets the Lukas' at EBC in London, the second interview between Glenn and the Lukas was in fact the continuation of Faulkner's: Burton's Faulkner would have accepted the mission of course and then hired immediately Haddad in London to help him.
A nonsense that you can experience in the final version : Glenn delivers very poorly his dialogs and makes the movie look like a slow TV-movie, Burton would have set all these scenes under high tension.
In fact, from the moment they return to Berlin, Glenn would have played almost exactly (except in the Turkish alley and in Austria at the end)the role of Edward Fox (who just took Burton's clothes and nothing else).
The helicopters that you see on the poster drawn for the movie starring Burton are absent from the final film but would have appeared towards the end : before the attempt to free Hess, there was supposed to be a massive operation of the British army (a simulated reaction to a Russian invasion, a training, but at a large scale in the conditions of reality, where the army has to evacuate British families from Berlin and so on...).
The Wild Geese is one of the better action films out there with its combination of a top-notch leading cast, a good supporting cast, a good script and spectacular action sequences.
Because while Scott Glenn and Barbara Carrera are good actors, they lack chemistry.
Glenn is not a leading man and it takes considerable effort to watch him throughout the entire film when he spends whole scenes by himself.
But the real star of the supporting cast is the cameo (for lack of better description) by Laurence Olivier as Rudolf Hess.
Olivier appearance is brief, during the finale of the film, but his scenes with Fox, Glenn, and Carrera makes the two hour running length of the film seem worthwhile.
So despite having an excellent Edward Fox and Laurence Olivier, Wild Geese II lacks in everything that the first film had.
I have long been interested in the then divided Germany and particularly the ravaged Eastern sector of Berlin which retained to a degree damaged the last war.Wild Geese 2 is a film that isn't that easy to find and unlike the original film hasn't been subject of a free giveaway DVD with Sunday newspapers.This is a fair story, about the plan to abduct Rudolf Hess from Spandau prison in Berlin, where he was held as a prisoner after the Nuremburg trials in 1946.
Its a good pot-boiler premise of a thriller and was set to star Sir Richard Burton, unfortunately he died before filming commenced.Edward Fox stepped into the role Burton would have taken and he does a great job in that part.The Hammer films actress Ingrid Pitt makes a brief appearance in the film - she escaped from the East Berlin sector by swimming the River Spree in 1962 after the wall had gone up and was picked up by a patrol of American soldiers.Ingrid Pitt did a few film appearances in Berlin, a situation she wasn't easy with having had to escape from the city in 1962, her filming was done before the wall came down in 1989It was a shame that Ingrid Pitt didn't feature more in the film, when you look at Who dares wins from the same year (1982), she put in a good performance as Helga, a big wheel in the People's Lobby movement in that film.Had Ingrid Pitt's character been used to exert influence over Barbra Carrera's character for instance, it might have given the film a more dynamic effect and put Ingrid Pitt higher up the credits too, she was sadly underused in this film.Wild Geese 2 is much like Where Eagles dare in a general sense, it is laced with danger and double cross throughout and up to the end there is no certainty that the mission objective will be successful.A good film overall, but I think more could have been made of some of the character's performances, especially Laurence Olivier, he only appears mainly towards the end, they could have wrought more out of his back story in the script I think.Perhaps the screenplay was cut short, for instance, how Scot Glenn's character manages to become equipped for the job, how Edward Fox's character does too, more detail in the film would have been worthwhile.Overall a watchable film..
WILD GEESE II is a stand-alone sequel to the Richard Burton film; none of the cast return and the story is quite different here with different characters in a different situation.
This is a men-on-a-mission film in which some mercenaries are tasked with springing notorious Nazi Rudolph Hess from a Russian-run prison in West Berlin, a task which is every bit as tense and difficult as it sounds.This is a largely criticised movie that suffers from having an overlong running time; around the middle part of the production the pacing really flags and half an hour could easily have been cut out to give it more pace and momentum.
Saying that, the pacing problems are really the only problem the film has, as otherwise it's a solid thriller with interesting cast members and well-directed action from old-timer Peter Hunt.The story and execution reminded me of RONIN a little, although the Frankenheimer film is by far the better of the two.
Once the pacing picks up, WILD GEESE II remains entertaining through to the end, and the action is stark and realistic; I liked it..
There are several "Oh Crap" moments I had watching this, which makes it cool in my book, I mean The Wild Geese had like one of those when they blow up the bridge and the rest was pretty formulaic, I do not want to compare this to WG though as I loved that film also, I'm just saying that this film is not formulaic at all, it will surprise you, at least two or three times, trust me.
Edward Fox replays his Day Of The Jackal role to an extent, and Scott Glenn is at the peak of his bad as*ness career.