Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

DaviK24 First of all: The Sandokan movies from 1963 and 1964 are trash- cinema of the 60s, which nowadays appears once again cultic. You notice the low budget, but you will be abducted to beautiful original locations in India and Sri Lanka. Also the look of the costumes is very worth seeing.To the content (WARNING: SPOILERS from now on!):Sandokan, the pirate but also native prince, whose family was deposed and killed by the British, leads his people (a bunch of faithful, pirates, and adventurers) in the fight against the British colonial masters, who are as evil as the Nazis are in some US productions. It is very refreshingly one-sided and wonderfully politically incorrect, that the British here are only bad guys. The first part is, as far as the action is concerned, a little lame, up to the last 15 minutes, but then it's really right. The Malayan natives, supported by Sandokan's men, storm the mighty British fort. The portrayal of the violence in this battle is already quite violent. The British soldiers are really massacred here, which I have not yet seen in this mass of kills. Particularly noteworthy is the scene in which Sandokan fires with a conquered machine gun in a bunch of soldiers in the yard of the fort also backwards and mercilessly mowed them down, which is all shown by the camera. Here is no shading of the camera, you see them going down and in other scenes their dead bodies lying around overall in the background around the whole fort. The Stuntfights are partly quite amateur, but this does not stop the spectacle of this mass struggle.However, the second part is still a little more violent when Sandokan breaks out with his men from a prison camp with a mine and a quarry. There he used also a conquered British machine gun, which he mounted on a truck and then firing around on a ride through the mine, killing British soldiers in rows with it. This goes even further when he slaughters nearly the entire British garrison alone in the yard of the camp with the MG, so that the court is covered with the bodies in red British uniforms. The fight is quite one-sided but this machine gun raid is really suspicious. There are three of these battles in the second part, one on a ship, in the prison camp and in the final battle. In all three battles the British soldiers are completely slaughtered by the pirates and the natives, something which would been no longer shown in this intensity and political incorrect size of the massacres. Infortunately we have only one battle in part 1. A few more battles would be better but the Fort battle here is probably the best.Overall my conclusion is: Good entertaining films, in which the natives are the really one-sided good ones, which I find very refreshing.

JohnHowardReid I couldn't resist using the delightful synopsis in MGM's press handout for my story summary. I mean it really leaves you full of knowledge, enabling you to instantly make up your mind whether you want to watch "Sandokan" or give it a miss! My verdict, before even before looking at the movie, is to give it a miss! Umberto Lenzi is one of the dullest directors of the Italian sword-and-torso epics. Despite rich production values and lots of explosive action with heaps of dress extras running amok, the dull yet preposterous plot, combined with Lenzi's inefficient yet heavy- handed direction, results in an entertainment mix that even the most indulgent fans will sum up as very ordinary. In Lenzi's perfunctory hands, a normally sure-fire gimmick such as "Who-is-the-mysterious- traitor-in-our-midst?" comes across with virtually no impact whatsoever. And as for the clichéd and unintentionally ludicrous dialogue...Anti-British audiences may partly enjoy the movie. But the rest of us will rate it as a bore. In all departments.

unclehugo Sandokan and his group of followers on the mission to fight merciless English colonial army and to free Sandokan's father. Thanks to one Portugese gentleman who puts on a stolen British uniform and tricks the enemy into thinking Sandokan was eliminated, rebels succeed in penetrating a British fortress and capturing the highest ranking officer's niece. Unfortunately, there is a traitor among Sandokan's men. This rat keeps divulging classified information to the other side and counteracts each Sandokan's future move. The Tiger of Mompracem has to reveal the identity of the traitor, protect the British girl from the dangers of jungle, avoid bullets during several clashes, break out of jail and outwit those treacherous Englishmen... Apart from several action sequences and one bullet removal, the movie contains a bit of romance when British officer's niece succumbs to the power of Sandokan's personality, and large number of exotic animals: poisonous snakes, elephants, a tiger (who gets his buttocks kicked by Sandokan) and a smart chimpanzee lady who helps rebels escape from prison cell... Dakkar, the guy who later appeared in Fulci's Zombie and Girolami's Zombie Holocaust, plays one of Sandokan's men in this nice old-fashioned adventure.

alphaboy This film even seemed stiffer than other Italian adventure-films of that time, and Steve Reeves, believe me!, doesn't help a bit. The storyline is tedious and unattractive. There is a lot of archive footage for the jungle-fauna built in (that even looks livelier than the film itself). Only fun scene: Reeves' fight against a tiger.But in the last ten minutes the situation explodes, and there is this gigantic battle at the fort, well staged and fun. Reeves gets to fire a machine gun (a little like Django) and matches the strength of an army. If only Lenzi had divided the action and strewn it all over the film's time, it would have been more watchable (if you don't skip the beginning, that is). My rating: 5/10.