WWII adventure from John Milius, about an American deserter who becomes a tribal leader in Borneo and is conscripted by the British to battle the Japanese. Based on a novel by Pierre Schoendoerffer, himself a filmmaker, and an artist of finer sensibility -- a sort of junior Conrad -- than Milius normally emulates (finer, say, than the sensibility of Conan the Barbarian). The result is rather more burdening than uplifting. It gets off to a good start, with magnificent views of a small boat on rough seas, and with two British paratroopers taken captive by natives self-described as "Comanche." But the momentum is stopped cold by lengthy flashbacks, and is never regained in Milius's muddy narrative line and messy action scenes. Nick Nolte, Nigel Havers, Frank McRae, James Fox. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd
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