| Overview: | Set in 1976, Eastern Condors tells the tale of commando team sent to Vietnam to destroy a secret store of missles left behind by the departing American forces. Led by Lt. Col. Lam (Lam Ching Ying), the force is a seedy bunch of Chinese and Vietmanese criminals picked from an American prison and promised their freedom if they complete the mission. Airdroping over Vietnam in the dead of night, the team rendevous with three female Cambodian guerillas (led by Joyce Godenzi) and the mission gets underway. Naturally, things don't go smoothly as personalities clash and the commandos are killed off one by one. The first stop is a local village, where the team hooks up with with Rat Chieh (Yuen Biao), a chopper-riding contraband dealer, and his doddering, feeble-minded uncle (Yeung Lung), who is also the brother of Lt. Col. Lam's superior. The commandos tangle repeatedly with the Vietnamese, and are pursued by an effete, spectacle-wearing general (Yuen Wah), who is prone to hiccuping, fanning himself, and laughing like a demented loon. The team finally reaches the base with the VC hot on their heels, and after much sound and fury our hero, Tung ming-sun (Sammo Hung) faces off against the general, who turns out to be a kung-fu dynamo.
Eastern Condors is the Dirty Dozen by way of Hong Kong, with a liberal sprinkling of the Deer Hunter thrown in as well. The movie features serviceable, if unremarkable battle scenes; one of the heroes grabs a machinegun, and then we cut to a scene of dozens of soldiers falling backwards as bullets riddle their bodies or grenade blasts fling them skyward. There are also the requisite scenes of wounded commandos giving their gutsy-yet-tender last words to their grieving-yet-determined comrades in arms, plus the required character clashes, frayed tempers, and a "what is this mission all about scene." Of course, what were really here for is to see Sammo and Co. kick butt with kung fu, and in this they do not disappoint, though for the real meat, you have to wait for the final confrontation between Sammo and Yuen Wah. Overall, it's an entertaining film, just not a particularly original one.
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