I only decided to watch this movie because of the potential for ninja action based on the main actors that's what he's known for. Instead what I found was a very odd mix of Indiana Jones, apocalypse now and king Solomon's mines. If you think that sound like far too much in one movie you would be correct. The story begins with a group of explorers in the jungle who are attacked by natives. The group manages to escape but are recaptured apart from the hero who escapes and vows to return to save the group of explorers. The remainder of the film is the hero's trek back into the jungle to rescue his explorer buddies. Sounds straight forward but add in a Nazi scientist and not one but two people out for revenge against the Nazi scientist, the plot starts to get too complicated for what's basically an action movie. The hero occasionally narrates parts of the film a la apocalypse now and the river boat action scenes with murderous natives further add to the apocalypse now style. What is very strange however is the heavyweight acting talent in this movie. There's quite a few well regarded actors in this but it's still not a good film. The action scenes are not bad but the ending is quite unsatisfactory. There's no real depth to any of the characters and it's hard to understand what's going on and exactly who some people are. There's basically too many people, too much plot and far too many idea for this to be a coherent film. It's not even good from a so bad it's good perspective. I'd say it's entirely forgettable but it's hard to forget when it hasn't even registered.
Review of River of Death
