Michael_Elliott Tough to Kill (1978) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Italian war flick has Luc Merenda playing our military hero who joins a bunch of cut-throats being led by the evil Major Hagerty (Donald O'Brien). Soon the men head out through the jungles into enemy territory so that they can blow up a dam but along the way they learn that one of the men are wanted and have a million dollar price tag on their head. While this film is certainly forgettable in the long run, there's no doubt that it's pretty entertaining to watch. D'Amato does a pretty good job at keeping everything moving after a slow first twenty-minutes. We don't really get much character development but the actors at least bring their characters to life and make them fun to watch. The film has an ultra low budget so one shouldn't expect anything on a grand scale but I admire the film for doing so much for such a little price tag. The movie manages to be entertaining thanks in large part to the actors who really dig deep in their roles and at least seem to be having fun. Pretty much each character is some sort of stereotype but that's okay simply because of the fun factor. O'Brien really stands out as the evil Major who likes proving his braveness by challenging men to stand on top of a grenade. Merenda is also entertaining as the rebel fighting who stands up for whatever is right and doesn't care who he battles. The actual story isn't the greatest in the world but it at least gives the characters something to do and gets us through the 90-minutes. There's certainly nothing groundbreaking or special here but if you're looking for some Euro fun then this movie is certainly better than a lot of the stuff out there.

jaibo 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.

dogcow 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.

dwpollar 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.