Robert Mitchum was not terribly proud of The Amsterdam Kill, it was another of those films he did for the money and an all expense paid vacation to both Hong Kong and Amsterdam where the action switches back and forth. It's a cheaply made action thriller with not a whole lot going for it other than some good cast names.
The film was directed by one Robert Clouse whose main experience is from directing martial arts action features. The Amsterdam Kill was produced by a Hong Kong syndicate who kind of operated on the fly so to speak.
Keye Luke is a big Chinese drug lord operating in Amsterdam and he comes to former DEA agent Mitchum with a proposition. He wants out and for a nice financial consideration is willing to rat out his competitors. Nice business to be in. Mitchum left the DEA under cloudy circumstances and they reluctantly go for his deal.
But when things don't work out and bodies start turning up, especially when several DEA agents are killed, but Mitchum's left unscathed deliberately, there's no doubt a rat in the ratting out operation. But who can it be?
Some of the others involved in this testosterone film are Bradford Dillman, Richard Egan, Leslie Nielsen, and George Cheung. Mitchum's main complaint was he and Cheung having to do a dip in the dirty canals of Amsterdam, no stunt doubles because he has some dialog as he and Cheung climb out of a car that had to go in the drink. He was sixty years old and understandably afraid of God knows what he might catch. Katharine Hepburn went into the Venetian canals in Summertime, but that was an accident that David Lean kept in the film.
As Mitchum said of himself that the folks in Hollywood thought that that bum Mitchum would do just about anything.
