mophfr This movie is the saddest failure in film history. You have to know that legendary film producer Euan Lloyd accepted to make the film in despite of the fact that insurances refused to cover Richard Burton. It was an ultimate proof of courage and loyalty to a friend, sadly rewarded by a tragedy : Richard Burton died one day before shooting. Burton, before dying, was very enthusiastic about the filming of "Wild Geese II. Something he would have never been if it was to act in an illogical story where he's not the leader anymore (the final movie). Actress Ingrid Pitt is also very clear : it was supposed to be the new big production starring Richard Burton. 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. The sniper is definitively NOT a role invented for Burton to take in account the fact that he had difficulties to walk (he had a surgery on his spine at the beginning of 1984) : it was in the book ! But reliable sources effectively claim that Burton would have been the sniper. 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). So : where is the truth ? In fact Burton would have been the sniper in the first part of the 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. They exchange in London the funny dialogs about Faulkner's leg that you hear in the final movie when they come back to Berlin, after that they fly together to Berlin. All this is not in the book and was found out to let Glenn handle the action scenes (with still Burton as the logical leader of the mission). So in the script, in Berlin, Glenn jogs around the Spandau Prison under Faulkner's protection (hidden as a sniper somewhere in a building). Faulkner reports to Kathy at the stadium, then again Scott Glenn-Haddad visits the barracks for a closer observation of Spandau. When he leaves, some people try to kidnap him. In the final film he's kidnapped, but here Faulkner (still the sniper) shoots to save him, Haddad manages to escape but Faulkner not (because of his leg) and is quickly found, taken, violently interrogated and left for dead on the highway. You understand also that if Faulkner doesn't meet Reed-Henry at the hospital, it complicates unnecessarily the story. Unnecessarily because Burton could have played these scenes without a problem (except his limping, he was at his peak) and it's the leader of the mission who has to talk to the key characters who could help to organize the escape. Faulkner would have then re-met Kathy and explained to her that he has to be forgotten a little after these assassination attempt that he survived and goes to Bavaria before he meets again with Haddad in Munich. From there, the 3 of them (Faulkner, Kathy, Haddad) go back to Berlin. Faulkner is for one last time the sniper in the Turkish alley : he asks Haddad to lead Stroebling's men to that place and the final shooting is in the movie. From that very moment : if you let Faulkner keeping on being the sniper, the colonel Faulkner isn't the leader anymore and lets Glenn handling the dialog scenes. 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. Again : re-watch those scenes, all of them are decisive and superbly written for an actor like Burton. On the contrary, Glenn would have attacked alone the warehouse towards the end, while Burton would have taken the lead on the accident's site. 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). That second part of the movie would have been very close to the novel. Of course : many scenes would have been far more spectacular. 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...). It was Reed-Henry's idea to help the mercenaries to take advantage of that confusion during their own rescue operation. All this disappeared. But you could find many other examples like that by reading the book. Carney's novel is a masterpiece wonderfully respected by Reginald Rose. I really hope that this review helped you to imagine the pure masterpiece Euan Lloyd was about to deliver along with Richard Burton, Reginald Rose and Roy Budd (his music for that film is one of the most powerful themes ever composed in cinema history).

vandino1 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). Perhaps Burton saw the script for this mess and realized there was no reason to go on living. There is certainly no reason to go on watching this thing, that's for sure. It's all about some muddled kidnapping of Rudolf Hess from Spandau prison. Seems the British, the Germans, the Soviets and the scriptwriter all want to have a hand in either killing or keeping Hess alive. When we finally get a look at Hess, after 90+ minutes of tedious intrigue, it turns out that that the kidnappers have goofed and grabbed Sir Laurence Olivier instead---and not the good Olivier, but the decrepit 'Jazz Singer' version. Sir Larry, that sly ol' dog, thinks he can fool us with a Hess-like unibrow and that 'Marathon Man' German accent, but we're not buying it. The kidnappers aren't either and dump Sir Larry/Hess at the French Embassy in Berlin. The real Hess died in 1987 (hung himself in his cell, perhaps after viewing this film) and Olivier followed in 1989. Time passages.....Oh, there is something of interest in this film, at least for fanciers of woodworking. That would be Scott Glenn's performance. There is a point in the film where he appears badly injured but I'm thinking it's a cover-up for an obvious case of attack by termites. At one risible point, the benumbed Glenn re-tells his sorrowful back-story of family slaughter to Carrera with the closing line: "Death ate its way into me." That's code for termites. Or perhaps Novocaine ate its way into him. Glenn had already tried out his zombie-style "acting" before in 'The Keep', but this is the topper: you'll be hard-pressed to find a more appallingly flat performance recorded on film. At least Edward Fox (doing his 'Day of The Jackal' thing) is lively. Otherwise you get Robert Webber literally phoning in his performance, all two minutes of it, and Patrick Stewart doing a small bit (complete with bad accent) as a Soviet military man, and Stratford Johns practically faxing Sydney Greenstreet from the dead as a chuckling, gargantuan wheeler-dealer. Paul Antrim gets the Sergeant Major Harry Andrews part, and Derek Thompson gets the nonsensical IRA soldier gig. For some reason Thompson's character, in his attempts to sneak away to report to his superiors, feels the need to keep spiking Fox's character with LSD. Guess the IRA frowns on complicated solutions... like using sleeping pills. And there's also the main caper requiring our heroes to impersonate British soldiers, but Glenn can't even manage the slightest accent. Somehow the real British soldiers guarding Hess, when confronted by the very out-of-place Glenn shouting at them with his harsh American accent, do his bidding without question. Well, at least there is a bright side: there hasn't been a Wild Geese III. Yet.

goldfinger2a-2 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 8/10

glynnewiley This is a highly underated film. For those of you who love Hard action films , this is perfect. Peter Hunt gives the procedings a no frills, lean and mean pace. He brilliantly captures the tough World the characters live in. I loved the first film, this isn't as good but is entertaining enough. It is very much like 'Who dares Wins' in its uncinical approach to fast and heavy violence. The characters are not nice people so there is little love loss between them. Scott Glenn plays the lead Emotionless and I believe this is done on purpose.