According to the trivia-section here, lead actors Robert Mitchum and Bradford Dillman both weren't very enthusiast to be starring in "The Amsterdam Kill". Well, if these men were still alive today, I would surely tell them they were wrong and that I had an awesome time watching this gritty and excessively violent late 70s action/thriller! It has a simple but engaging plot, a great cast & ditto director, outrageously violent scenes, and - most of all - lovely filming locations not too far from where yours truly lives. Amsterdam, that is... not Hong-Kong.
Robert Mitchum, as ex-DEA agent Quinlan, gets approached by Cantonese drug lord Chung Wei who wants out. He's willing to give a lot of incriminating information about the heroin trafficking activities between Hong-Kong and Amsterdam, but the DEA organization has more leaks than a teabag.
The plot seems confusing and unnecessarily convoluted at first, especially during the opening half hour and the constant switching between HK and Holland, but as soon as you figure out who's who and who's where, it becomes a very straightforward and undemanding action movie full of gunfire, chases, and executions. Two sequences are notably gruesome, with people tied to chairs or begging for their lives still getting mercilessly executed. The climax is also a blast, as Mitchum destroys a complete glasshouse farm with a bulldozer! Oh, next to Robert Mitchum and Bradford Dillman, "The Amsterdam Kill" also stars Leslie Nielsen. Since the film predates his slapstick-typecasting period, which began with "Police Squad" and lasted for the rest of his life, you might have to make a mental switch to take him serious as the stern (and most likely corrupt) head of DEA-Europe.
