{"id":6723,"date":"2024-10-25T10:14:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6723"},"modified":"2024-10-25T10:14:46","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T14:14:46","slug":"high-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/high-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"High Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"High Risk <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American Cinema\/Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 94 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stewart Raffill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stewart Raffill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Snow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Phillips Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, Lindsay Wagner, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little, Chick Vennera, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine, Douglas Sandoval, David Young, Richard Young, Ana De Sade, Josephina Echinoa, Udana Power, Stephanie Faulkner.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose one way to beat inflation is to go to South America and rob a Colombian drug lord. That\u2019s what four regular guys from California do in High Risk<\/strong>, an entertaining actioner from writer-director Stewart Raffill (The Ice Pirates) featuring a stellar cast. It\u2019s one of the last titles to be released by American Cinema Releasing (Good Guys Wear Black, A Force of One) before they went under in \u201981. It\u2019s yet another older movie that doesn\u2019t get the recognition it deserves.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Four friends- Stone (Brolin, Night of the Juggler), Tony (Vennera, Thank God It\u2019s Friday), Dan (Davison, Willard) and Rockney (Little, Blazing Saddles)- tell everybody they\u2019re going away for a weekend fishing trip. It\u2019s only a cover. What they\u2019re really doing is taking a plane to South America to rob drug lord Serrano (Coburn, The Magnificent Seven) of $5 million. You know what kind of movie you\u2019re dealing with when one of the men parachutes from the plane holding a poodle that miraculously doesn\u2019t get sucked from his hands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sneaking into Serrano\u2019s supposedly well-guarded house isn\u2019t a problem. Neither is forcing him to reveal his safe\u2019s combination at gunpoint. The guys even manage to evade his men in the jungle. Getting back to the plane that will take them home proves to be a big problem. Tony and Rockney get captured by Serrano\u2019s men and thrown into a jail cell by corrupt local police. Stone and Dan are unknowingly tracked by a gang of rebels led by Mariano (Quinn, The Guns of Navarone) who try to steal the money for themselves. That is, after they capture and tie up the Americans.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Most of High Risk<\/strong> centers on the guys\u2019 efforts to escape their captors and make a clean getaway. Tony and Rockney ally themselves with Olivia (Wagner, Nighthawks), the woman in the adjacent cell who claims she was framed for her crime. At one point, the two men find themselves running half-naked through the village after a kid helps them break out of jail. It results in Little\u2019s character boarding a bus dressed in women\u2019s clothes. At the rebels\u2019 campsite, Stone and Ben have to listen to Mariano explain how much worse his people have it and need the money more than rich Americans with houses, cars and food. It\u2019s the closest High Risk<\/strong> comes to making a relevant point about the economic woes of the early 80s. Thank God for that. Why spoil the fun?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Some will invariably draw comparisons to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and while the two movies may be alike in theory, High Risk<\/strong> has nothing to say about the corrupting influence of greed. It would have been too easy to have the friends turn on each other for a bigger piece of the pie. No honor among thieves doesn\u2019t really apply here since the four heroes aren\u2019t career criminals. Sure, they commit a crime- several, in fact- but to them it\u2019s just a weekend adventure albeit one with real bullets, real dangers and the real possibility of dying.<\/p>\n

\u00a0RIDDLE TIME! What does High Risk<\/strong> have in common with The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen and The Wild Geese? They all have cool all-star casts! This one has a nice line-up that also includes Ernest Borgnine (Escape from New York) as Clint, the gun seller who hooks up Stone and his buddies with some serious hardware. He has only one scene, but it\u2019s enough to up the movie\u2019s cool factor a few points. He\u2019s one of three Oscar winners in the cast (he got it for Marty), the others being Coburn (Affliction) and two-timer Quinn (Viva Zapata and Lust for Life). Also, Davison was nominated for Longtime Companion. He\u2019s good as Dan, a guy with doubts about what they\u2019re doing and why. The whole cast does a fine job with Brolin bringing plenty of macho to his character. Little adds a nice amount of humor. As the only significant female character, Wagner more than holds her own against the guys.<\/p>\n

\u00a0High Risk<\/strong> has plenty of exciting action and thrilling adventure. It has shoot-outs, chases, escapes and one awesome sequence that finds two of the guys hanging from a rope bridge high above a raging, rocky river. It moves at a quick pace. And it has a poodle too. I guess I should explain. The guys bring her along to distract the guard dogs at Serrano\u2019s house. Prostituting an innocent little dog, can you beat that? SPOLIER ALERT!<\/strong> She makes it to the end unharmed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In any event, High Risk<\/strong> is a forgotten gem. I remember Gene Siskel raving about it on Sneak Previews at the time of its release. I finally got to watch it in fall \u201985 when we rented it for Pop Pop from The Video Den. I\u2019ve seen it a few times over the years and always enjoy it. It\u2019s not a bad way to kill a dull weeknight during rerun season.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High Risk (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 American Cinema\/Action-Adventure-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 94 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence, drug use)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Stewart Raffill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Stewart Raffill\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Mark Snow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alex Phillips Jr.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, Lindsay Wagner, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little, Chick Vennera, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine, Douglas Sandoval, David Young, Richard Young, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-hidden-treasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/High-Risk-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7044,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6723\/revisions\/7044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}