Review: High Risk

Four cash-strapped friends (James Brolin, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little, and Chick Vennera – zero chemistry between them) with zero experience in violent activities attempt to carry out a robbery on the abode of a South American drug lord named Serrano (James Coburn). They also find themselves tangling with bandits, led by the blustery Mariano (Anthony Quinn). Lindsay Wagner turns up as a prisoner in a Colombian jail, Ernest Borgnine plays a friendly arms dealer named Clint.

 

Writer-director Stewart Raffill (whose “The Philadelphia Experiment” was pretty good) has himself a pretty damn good cast to work with on this 1981 flop. Unfortunately the majority of the actors are miscast and the film alternates between stupid and sluggish, as someone thought the world needed a somewhat light-hearted mixture of “Deliverance” and a heist/caper film. What on Earth was going on here? It’s the kind of flop filmed somewhere exotic (Mexico standing in for Colombia) that you just know the story behind its making would make for a better film than what we actually get on screen. I would also love to know which idiot devised the film’s posters. The film spawned two different posters for its release, both of them suggesting a wacky, rollickingly good-time action-comedy, both absolutely dreadful and pretty misleading. They’re worth Googling for unintentional hilarity, the film itself is sometimes referred to as an action-comedy, but believe me, laughs are non-existent. It’s really more of a ridiculous action/heist film than a comedy or spoof.

 

I really should’ve read that cast list more carefully, because anyone who has seen their fair share of garbage in their time knows that if a film features a guy named Chick Vennera in its cast, it’s probably not going to be “Citizen Kane” (Yes, he was in that one Robert Redford movie but have you even watched “The Milagro Beanfield War”? No, me either). Also, let’s be honest, as much as I’ve got as soft spot for “Fletch Lives”, any film featuring Cleavon Little that doesn’t feature the words “Blazing” and “Saddles” is probably going to be a teeny bit crap. Oh, it’s also from Hemdale? Yeah, they gave us “Platoon”, “Tommy”, “River’s Edge”, and “The Terminator”, sure. However, they’re also responsible for dreadful films and big flops like “Turkey Shoot”, the bizarro “The Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch”, “Yellowbeard”, and the truly ghastly “Vampire’s Kiss”. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that Mr. Raffill has a black mark or two to his name, particularly the infamous “E.T.” rip-off “Mac and Me”.

 

Things start alright, ‘coz hey it’s Ernest Borgnine ‘as Clint’. I don’t know why, but that credit made me chuckle. ‘ol Clint is a virtual one-man arsenal and Borgnine never phones in a performance no matter the film’s quality. He’s good fun, but sadly it’s a glorified walk-on and after his short scene he’s never seen again. That’s a shame, because Clint is more well-stocked in killing devices than Arnold Schwarzenegger in “Commando” for chrissakes. Instead, our protagonists are played by James Brolin, a young Bruce Davison, and the aforementioned Cleavon Little and Milady Vennera. Seriously, who calls themselves Chick for a first name? Anyway, of the four Brolin is the only one who is halfway credibly cast, and unfortunately he’s a bit dull and not very invested in the part. Call him a poor man’s Burt Reynolds. Davison is the most likeable of the bunch but he looks so young and nerdy he seems immediately ill-equipped for this ridiculous mission. You worry he’s gonna end up being the poor Ned Beatty in “Deliverance” of the group. Thankfully the similarity between the two films isn’t that strong and none of the men get sexually interfered with to my knowledge. At any rate, Davison is the best company of the four leads, no matter how bizarrely miscast he and his character seem for this mission. As for Cleavon Little, he’s normally a charming and funny presence on screen, but here he’s surprisingly uninteresting. Frankly one gets the feeling his casting is solely to fill the ‘token black guy’ quota so the other three protagonists don’t appear racist or some shit (Watching his disinterested performance, one gets the feeling Mr. Little realises this is the case, too). Even then, surely there were other African-American actors more suited to this kind of material? I mean, the writer-director doesn’t give Little anything funny to do or say, so why bother casting him? He sure as shit has no idea how to act tough or menacing as he’s required to once or twice here. As I said, for a film IMDb insists is partially a comedy, but I didn’t see anything in the way of humour here, just a really laughable plot and miscast actors. Seriously though…the plot. These four seemingly capable and intelligent people come up with the most absurdly inappropriate plan for a quick cash grab you can imagine. Why would these four guys, in needing cash, immediately think that robbing a drug baron in South America was a great idea for a quick score? Remember, two of these guys are Cleavon Little and Bruce Davison, and one of the other two is a ‘Chick’. You’d be better off sending ‘ol Clint out there on his own. He’s played by Ernest Borgnine and he’s armed to the teeth, surely he could get the job done better than these soccer dads. Oh, and the dog. One of them brings a dog along for the mission, and don’t worry, the dog is never in any danger because this movie hasn’t got a brain in its head and wants you to believe the dog would be fine amidst all the mayhem.

 

For no good reason, Lindsay Wagner turns up acting all goofy and standing out like a sore thumb in a film that already has a cute dog and Cleavon Little and Bruce Davison attempting to rob a drug cartel. She doesn’t belong and she doesn’t add anything beyond a recognisable name (albeit mostly for people of a certain age). Perhaps worst of all is Anthony Quinn. He’s probably the least miscast of anyone here, but playing a shifty bandit, he gives the same slobbering, tediously hammy performance he gave in almost everything after 1980. The guy was pretty damn good in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (“Requiem for a Heavyweight”, “Last Train from Gun Hill”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Across 110^th Street”), but by this stage he was happy to just ham it up to high heaven, and it rarely resulted in anything enjoyable (though hammy or not, he was the only thing that didn’t send me to sleep in Tony Scott’s dreadful “Revenge”). Sadly, the writer-director seems a heck of a lot more interested in Quinn’s character than the main villain played by James Coburn, so we spend far too much time with this mouldy ham and cheese sandwich. It really is shoddy filmmaking by Raffill to forget about Coburn for such a long stretch after all that build-up, when Quinn’s character should be a mere side lark at best. As for Mr. Coburn, I’m not sure if this was around the time his arthritis was kicking in or not, but he looks awfully frail in his first of only about three scenes. Thankfully, his next scene is much, much  better. In fact, it’s the only damn worthwhile scene in the film as old pro Coburn provides some genuine grim menace as the big bad drug lord. He’s clearly not well cast as anybody named ‘Serrano’, but playing a real mean bastard? Yeah, that’s comfortably in the post-1975 James Coburn wheelhouse, as he was too old to be playing the grinning, hippie-ish renaissance man/ladies’ man guy by then. From the late 70s onwards he was heading more into John Huston ‘Grand old bastard’ territory (where Donald Sutherland currently resides). Anyway, he works in a film where nothing else works, including a very cheap-sounding music score by the now more famous Mark Snow of “The X-Files” fame.

 

The cast are either wasted, miscast or both, and the writer-director has no idea what the hell kind of movie he’s trying to make here. It’s laughable but not in any intentional or interesting way, unless your idea of a good time is watching “The Bionic Woman” smoke a joint with Sheriff Black Bart from “Blazing Saddles”. Unconvincing in the extreme, sluggish and boring for the most part this one’s rightly been forgotten. James Coburn and Ernest Borgnine are good, but aren’t in the film anywhere near enough to save it. 

 

Rating: D+