Eastern Condors

Actor/director Sammo Hung gathered an international cast including the late Oscar winner Dr. Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields) and some of the most recognizable faces in Hong Kong cinema for this action-packed martial arts adventure. Set in 1976, the film focuses on a ragtag group of Chinese and Vietnamese prisoners trained by the United States government to carry out a potentially suicidal parachute mission into Vietnam. They are charged with destroying a cache of American weapons accidentally left behind when Saigon fell the previous year before they are recovered by the Vietcong. Led by Tung Ming-sun (Hung), the troops are escorted by a trio of hardbitten female guerrilla fighters from Cambodia (led by Joyce Godenzi), and guided by a black market peddler (Yuen Biao) and his insane uncle (Ngor). Chased by a crazed Vietnamese colonel (Yuen Wah), the team makes their way to the underground storage complex for a violent, impressively staged finale. Blending traditional genre elements with those of the American war film (notably The Dirty Dozen), the film co-stars Corey Yuen, Yuen Woo-ping, Dick Wei, and Phillip Ko, among a host of other familiar genre regulars. The dubbed version released by Tai Seng changes some character names to eliminate any Vietnamese among the heroes and cuts three sequences available in subtitled import editions from other distributors.