Tough to Kill (1979)

TOUGH TO KILL is a nihilistic Italian war film, following a bunch of soldiers as they trek through the South American wilderness in a hunt for bounty money. It's one of those films with a small cast and plenty of action, featuring characters double-crossing each other throughout. The whole thing has a gritty and downbeat atmosphere that somehow combines with the visuals to offer better than usual entertainment.The film feels a little bit like the Italian WW2 movies of the late 1960s, updated with a downbeat '70s vibe. There are some touches of the Italian cannibal genre, such as the character with a wounded leg, which is no surprise given that the director is none other than Joe D'Amato, the notorious exploitation stalwart. The action is low rent but effective, and the fast pacing means at least that it's never boring. The movie was shot in the Dominican Republic and features Luc Merenda as the amoral hero and Donald O'Brien as the tough major. It reminded me of THE DIRTY SEVEN, a later D'Amato movie with Laura Gemser, which is even better.

D'Amato's war film meshes The Wild Geese with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, as a group of mercenaries on a mission in an unnamed African country are sidetracked by their scheme to deliver one of their number dead or alive to the shadowy organisation who have placed a bounty on his head. The film stets up its seeming hero, Martin, as a watchful and cool customer, infiltrating the mercenary unit and successfully winning a game of one-upmanship with the unit's martinet commander, Major Hagerty. The two men are forced to work in collusion when they discover that they are both planning to kidnap the wanted man and get the reward – Hagerty needs Martin as only Martin knows the delivery point, but Martin can't shake Hagerty nor the two other mercenaries that get involved. As with most gangs of desperate men, the gang is internally divided and constantly at each other's throats. Their only bond is collaboration to make money.Tough to Kill is a typically cynical 70s war exploitation picture, showing men who fight not for king or country or ideal, but simply for their own financial gain. D'Amato, with his customary flair for disparagement, reduced the war game to a petty scrabble to see who can deliver a body for booty – a body dead or alive, so the he-man warriors are reduced to a team of walking wounded and bickering ninnies squabbling over who carries a stinking corpse and finally a severed head. Despite encouraging us to see Martin as cool and collected for the first half of the film, D'Amato turns the tables on his hero and his audience at the end, by having Martin and the others played for fools by the seemingly innocent but actually scheming and inventive black helper who has been their lackey throughout – white culture is seen as not merely inherently greedy and corrupt and back-stabbing but also as a game which whites are no longer top dog at.The film is worth watching for its steely reductionism and for its moments of genuine sadism – the wanted mercenary is a nasty piece of work who tortures the black guy by immersing him in a turd-filled latrine tub, and who dies himself when fed a cyanide-laced rabbit whilst ravenous. The universe portrayed by Tough to Kill is by a fetid dog eat dog swamp, and although the ending portrays the black guy as managing to beat the white man at his own corrupt game, the victory feels unstable, as if at any moment what has been gained can be taken away; D'Amato was to explore this kind of pyrrhic black victory again in L'Alcova, showing explicitly in the later film how wobbly the triumph is.

What can I say about this film which hasnt already been said. Its a gritty, sleazy, cheap, but completely gripping action action thriller. You will be on the edge of your seat as the cast of completely unlikeable characters tear eachother to peices over a million dollar bounty. The pounding score and grimy setting really add to this nihilistic little nugget. This film proves that given a decent script and cast Joe D'Amato can really deliver the goods. A must see for fans of grimy jungle action thrillers and/or italian cinema.

1st watched 11/23/2002 - 5 out of 10(Dir-Joe D'Amato): Ok action-adventure film with unexpected twist at the end. This Italian film seems like it's trying to sell itself as a Rambo-type movie but it's less of a shoot-em-up and more of an adventure. A `white' mercenary is hired to be one of the guys in the troup but then return an enemy or the proof that this enemy is dead. As members of the troupe catch on to what's really happening they become an interested party to the mercenary's task but then they start dropping like flies and we're left with only a handful. This movie is more about the interaction of that handful, but the problem is that their actions are predictable and characteristic of their type of character in the film. So we basically know what's going to happen until the surprise ending. The ending is kind of a retaliation to how the movie treated the blacks in the story, and this part I liked. But overall, the whole movie is not quite worth the effort to get to the end.