Commandos

Rating:
Summary: Nothing special here.
Review: As far as I know, this movie concerns some Italian-American commandos who must seize an Italian held oasis and masquerade as its garrison for two days in advance of some major American operation. Now I would have been happy if this film was a nice crackerjack action thriller. But it isn't. There's plenty of competently directed and edited action sequences and explosions, but not much style to any of it. Too bad really, there's some decent production values in this film and Lee Van Cleef stars in it. Unfortunately he's saddled with a half-baked role as hard-nosed veteran Sergeant Sullivan, haunted by flashbacks of a botched mission in Bataan, in which he was one of three survivors out of a hundred. A failure he blames on the pencil-pushing gloryhound officer who initiated it. Thus, when the inexperienced Captain Valli comes to take charge of the current mission, Sullivan is naturally wary of him. Not a bad concept, but one never too deeply explored or meaningfully resolved, just scenes of Van Cleef and Jack Kelly staring and growling at each other. Hard to believe four writers(including Dario Argento) are credited with this script. The usually fine Mario Nascimbene must have composed about five minutes of original score, not a second of which is better than monotonous. Then there are the panzers, which are post-WW2 American tanks dressed up with a desert paint scheme and Afrika Corps markings. They rumble around the background in some short sequences throughout the movie, then finally brought to bear in the big finale. And darn if they don't have more presence than most of the actors! The DVD is another D-Vision con job, most likely mastered from videotape and looking as good as it. But at least it well last a long time, right? Typical flimsy packaging and inaccurate descriptions: the disk does contain chapter stops placed roughly every 12 minutes. If anyone cares.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing special here.
Review: As far as I know, this movie concerns some Italian-American commandos who must seize an Italian held oasis and masquerade as its garrison for two days in advance of some major American operation. Now I would have been happy if this film was a nice crackerjack action thriller. But it isn't. There's plenty of competently directed and edited action sequences and explosions, but not much style to any of it. Too bad really, there's some decent production values in this film and Lee Van Cleef stars in it. Unfortunately he's saddled with a half-baked role as hard-nosed veteran Sergeant Sullivan, haunted by flashbacks of a botched mission in Bataan, in which he was one of three survivors out of a hundred. A failure he blames on the pencil-pushing gloryhound officer who initiated it. Thus, when the inexperienced Captain Valli comes to take charge of the current mission, Sullivan is naturally wary of him. Not a bad concept, but one never too deeply explored or meaningfully resolved, just scenes of Van Cleef and Jack Kelly staring and growling at each other. Hard to believe four writers(including Dario Argento) are credited with this script. The usually fine Mario Nascimbene must have composed about five minutes of original score, not a second of which is better than monotonous. Then there are the panzers, which are post-WW2 American tanks dressed up with a desert paint scheme and Afrika Corps markings. They rumble around the background in some short sequences throughout the movie, then finally brought to bear in the big finale. And darn if they don't have more presence than most of the actors! The DVD is another D-Vision con job, most likely mastered from videotape and looking as good as it. But at least it well last a long time, right? Typical flimsy packaging and inaccurate descriptions: the disk does contain chapter stops placed roughly every 12 minutes. If anyone cares.

Rating:
Summary: Good Italian War Film, Bad DVD Transfer
Review: COMMANDOS a really, really good representation of the Italian war films. It contains a top-notch cast, some good action scenes, stunning photography and a good script. However, the the DVD released from Passion Productions (the most widely available one) does not do justice to the movie. The DVD is obviously mastered from an old videotape. The colors are worn out, the image is hazy, and there's plenty of dirt and grain all over the place. Also, whenever there is an explosion to the screen pixelates pretty badly. This was a really, really poor digital transfer. Besides that, the incredibly cheap MPEG-2 English audio track is muffled and the dubbed voices are a bit raspy. Finally, the ending credits cut to the main menu before they are finished scrolling. Worst of all, the disc is FULL SCREEN and NOT LETTERBOX. There are chapter stops which divide the movie [roughly] into 15 minute segments. It's also region free and can play in any DVD player.

I can recommend buying the LETTERBOX VHS from Front Row Features. It contains the entire movie, in true 2.35:1 widescreen format and the images look nearly perfect. I wish Front Row would get around to releasing this on DVD...

So, the DVD may last longer than the video, but other than that there's no reason to buy this.

Rating:
Summary: Fairly Good Van Cleef
Review: This Text refers to the St.Clair Vision DVD release.
St.Clair Vision have released this film in it's 2:35:1 widescreen ratio.
Not so much an anti-war film as, "there are no winners in this war" story. Picture quality is at best good though at times a little grainy.
A worthwhile purchase at a budget price, you can't beat it.
Lee Van Cleef is always worth a look.