Mercenary Fighters

My review was written in March 1988 after a screening on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"Mercenary Fighters" is a lamebrained action pic made in South Africa in 1986 under the title "Freedom Fighters" Cannon released it regionally last month, and dropped it in New York at a 42nd Street fleapit with zero advertising.

Peter Fonda toplines as a U. S. soldier of fortune hired by the government of the fictional central African nation of Shinkasa (an anagram for Kinshasa, ex-Leopoldville, capital of Zaire) to wipe out some rebels blocking a vast dam project which would force the Kurubu tribe off its homeland.

Of Fonda's motley crew of mercenaries, kindhearted beefcaker Reb Brown (after falling for a pretty white nurse, Joanna Weinberg) realizes he's fighting for the bad guys and takes up with the rebels. Dissension among the mercenaries pushes Ron O'Neal to do the right thing in the final reel but Fonda is a gammy-legged bad guy only out for a buck till the end.

Slapdash script and ineffectual direction (an explosion every once in a while) draint this programmer of any believability. Such is its miscalculation that miscast Robert DoQui as the heinous villain was mightily cheered on by the predominantly black 42nd Street audience when he viciously slaps down the nurse, who's only been trying to protect women and children in villages being murdered by DoQui's troops. Equally ridiculous is the scene of Brown named new leader of the Kurubu rebels by their dying chief, just after Brown in Rambo pose has mowed down Kurubus with a machine gun as he was hired to do.

Tech credits are acceptable except for the tinny musical track. A sloppy touch has erstwhile "Superfly" star Ron O'Neal misspelled as "O'Neil" in the opening credits.