User Reviews

This obscure thriller is the result of a collaboration between three countries – Italy, West Germany, and Israel – and with all that talent involved you'd think the movie would be at least halfway decent. Sadly not. Instead, this is a deservedly forgotten little movie, that attempts to channel the '70s interest in conspiracies, mysteries, and thrillers but offers only lacklustre thrills and excitement. Don't be fooled by the promise of a 'Golan-Globus' production in the opening credits – this is before the two names became synonymous with OTT Chuck Norris films packed with cheesy action. The only action to be found here is limited to around fifteen minutes of boat, car, and rooftop chases that take place around the half-hour mark. The boat and car scenes are sub-Bondian at best but always go through the motions than offering anything in the way of genuine excitement. At least they show off the nice canals of Amsterdam which always make good movie backdrops. The rooftop fights are better and we do get to see a guy falling from the roof, so this is easily the most exciting part of the film.

Otherwise the running time is padded out with shots of the hero, played by Fabio Testi, walking around, sitting around, or talking to people. There's a lot of inaction and even the climatic battle on board a ship is particularly dull by genre standards – this is an extreme (even ludicrous) case of the bad guys not being able to hit anybody while the good guys kill at a rate of one baddie per shot. The stand-off runs on interminably for twenty minutes or so and is enlivened only by an appalling Scottish accent that had me reaching for the mute button.

The film has a gritty, dirty, on-the-street look but the effect is more depressing than enthralling. Testi, long a staple of Italian cinema, can be pretty good and charismatic when he wants to be, but the film doesn't offer him the opportunity. Assi Davan is the Israeli co-star and he fares little better, and the two are so thinly characterised as to make them almost interchangeable. Janet Agren – familiar to horror fans for her role in the cult Lucio Fulci film CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD – looks good (if heavily made up) but her woman-in-peril scenes are limited. She only seems to be around to whip her top off and take part in a twist worthy of Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Other regular staples of Italian cinema – e.g. Hebert Fux – are invisible in a film populated by cardboard cut-outs throughout.

Utterly devoid of incident, excitement and the genre staples of suspense and tension, THE URANIUM CONSPIRACY is a by-the-numbers outing that ticks all of the boxes without ever doing anything right. Given the cooperation between three countries during production, this might be the result of a 'too many cooks' situation.

Since it is virtually impossible to determine what parts of "The Uranium Conspiracy" were directed by either of its two co-directors (Gianfranco Baldanello of "Colt in the Hand of the Devil" and Menahem Golan of "The Delta Force"), it is difficult to praise the appropriate person for the parts of this Israeli-German-Italian movie that succeed. The first two-thirds of this scenic, picture-postcard lensed, travelogue thriller qualify as straightforward espionage boilerplate. Unless you watch the widescreen version of this movie, you cannot properly appreciate cinematographer Adam Greenberg's impressive pictorial compositions. The final third bristles with machine gun violence as the heroes make sure that 'crime doesn't pay' for the villains. Five scenarists collaborated on the screenplay, unless each had a hand in rewriting it. Again, it is hard to tell who is liable for the good, the bad, and the ugly in this lightweight crime thriller about a terrorist attempt to ship uranium to evil foreign powers. Basically, this European actioneer pits the Mossad, a.k.a. Israel Intelligence, against villains who display little regard for human life. Renzo (Fabio Testi of "Gang War in Naples") is a hired troubleshooter, and Israel Intelligence has infiltrated him into a uranium mine in Zaire that resembles a prison. Renzo is out to learn as much as he can about the Baron's (Siegfried Rauch of "The Eagle Has Landed") efforts to export the key ingredient for atomic bombs. The Mossad agent who serves as Renzo's go-between, Dan (Assaf Dayan of "The Day the Fish Came Out"), has more faith in him than his superiors. Renzo is good with his hands in a tight spot, and he is suave enough to seduce ladies. Eventually, Renzo goes to bed with Helga (Janet Agren of "Seven Dangerous Girls") who works as a secretary for the Baron at a Salzburg, Austria, chemical processing plant where she answers phones, performs simple typing duties, and is pretty much left alone to do her job. She falls for Renzo and furnishes him with enough incriminating information to raise the Baron's hackles. The Baron and his plug-ugly henchmen take Helga in for questioning. They want her to identify Renzo. Renzo and she cross paths and Renzo manages to rescue Helga from the Baron. A lively little boat chase through the canals of Amsterdam, comparable to a similar chase in "Puppet on a Chain," ensues. Renzo is captured, but Helga suffers a far worse fate. Helga's departure about half-way through "The Uranium Conspiracy" endows this thriller with more depth than it would have been otherwise. She is like the sacrificial lamb in the James Bond movies. One of the two girls that 007 stands between usually dies at the hands of the villains. Furthermore, Renzo doesn't get the girl at fadeout, and he remembers her after she has passed. A surprise like this is as radical as this movie gets, and it imparts greater dramatic weight to the film. Our heroes team up after the Baron has taken Renzo hostage aboard the freighter carrying enough uranium to make 25 plutonium bombs. Israel Intelligence attaches electric mines to the hull of the ship. Everything is set to go boom when Dan refuses to let Renzo die in the process. Mind you, Dan's superiors lack Dan's faith in Renzo. Dan sneaks aboard the ship, rescues Renzo, and a firefight breaks out for control of the ship. Unfortunately, the villains overwhelm our protagonists, but Israel Intelligence is on the ball. After almost detonating the explosives on the ship's hull, the Israel send in a team to wrest control of the ship from the Baron. This part of "The Uranium Conspiracy" moves much faster with the shootout. The Mossad masquerade as Spanish Customs to board the ship. This final firefight delivers griping action. Again, the fuse in this explosive thriller burns slowly in the first two-thirds of "The Uranium Conspiracy" until it ignites the fireworks in the final third.

You know how I always say that these Eurospy movies are like the UN? How about this one, which is an Israeli/German/Italian movie co-directed by Gianfranco Baldanello (Danger!! Death Ray) and one of my favorite insane people, Menahem Golan - the man who would soon enough direct the magnum opus The Apple.

Who would star, some would wonder? Fabio Testi from One Damned Day at Dawn... Django Meets Sartana! and Fulci's The Four of the Apocalypse and Contraband. Oh yes.

The love interest? Janet Agren from City of the Living Dead! Oh man!

That's most of the excitement of the film, which promises a Bond-like experience from its poster and description and does not deliver.

Altogether not a bad action thriller if you don't mind wading through all the filler spots including boat, car and foot chases, underwater mining sequences and a meaningless ship search for a supposed murderer. Thirty some plus years ago this would have played like a fantasy with it's plot involving a clandestine business group buying up two hundred tons of yellow cake uranium. Today, who knows?

Fabio Testi and Assaf Dayan portray a couple of hunky secret agents on the trail of the deadly cache, taking them to various scenic locales in Europe, among them Amsterdam and Milan. Janet Agren shows up for the first half of the film as a love interest for Testi's Renzo, and if there's a twist moment in the picture it's what happens to her character about midway through.

Although we're set up for a grand show with all those explosives planted on the Scheersburg, it comes to naught when the good guys make the save at the last moment. My question is, if the boss handing out assignments to Renzo and Dan (Dayan) wasn't too concerned about blowing up the ship with just Renzo on board, why did it matter if Dan went looking for him - the stakes were the same. Oh, and there's a character named Ulrich in the cast whose real name makes me wonder why he didn't change it for professional reasons. Seriously, you have to look it up.