Partisans attacked the ship, with lots of people and the Jews held by the Germans. After the release and attack, there is yet another partisan attack on the convoy of Germans. Partisans few more times attacked Germans without warning, which will infuriate the Germans, and lead to tragic losses the partisans and the innocent population, to the punitive expeditions and major offensives on the partisans, which will lead to the total failure of the this partisan unit. I saw this under one of its many titles, "Hell River", and was pretty unimpressed. It has a few things going for it–for one thing the photography is quite crisp, unlike many 1970s Euro-made WW 2 "epics", which tended to be either washed-out or muddy–and the music is at least appropriate and doesn't drown out or overwhelm what's on screen–but there are a lot more cons than pro's. The performances aren't particularly good, especially Adam West, wildly miscast as a Nazi officer; he is stiff as a board, has no chemistry or connection with anyone in the cast and slips in and out of an embarrassingly bad German accent. Rod Taylor is stalwart as usual, but he's simply too old to play an action hero. Xenia Gratsos, here billed as "Brioni Farrell", matches West's wooden acting and is rather plain-looking to boot. The plethora of action scenes are done in a very by-the-numbers fashion and tend to be unrealistic, i.e., when the partisans attack a German armored column the Germans are mowed down by the dozens but only a very few partisans fall, despite the Germans opening up with everything they had.<br/><br/>All in all it's not as bad as a lot of the cheap WW 2 crapfests the Italians ground out like sausages in the 1960s and 1970a–my God, what a tsunami of stinkers they were–but it's nothing to write home about. Watchable, to a degree, but not memorable. Another low rent WW2 epic made in Yugoslavia with a largely local cast and crew, propped up by a couple of big Hollywood names. HELL RIVER is the condensed version of a four part TV movie entitled PARTIZANI, and it simply isn't very good. The direction is weak, the action sequences feel like stock footage although they're not, and Hollywood offers much slicker, more professionally made war films than this one.<br/><br/>Saying that, HELL RIVER isn't the worst of its type. Some of the imagery is pretty good, like the line of tanks rolling through a debris-strewn township, and the producers certainly get their money's worth from the WW2-era weapons, costumes, and vehicles they have access to. I've always enjoyed Rod Taylor's acting performances and he doesn't disappoint here either, although he does seem to have aged very rapidly in the space of just a decade. Adam West is as wooden as ever and struggles in one of his most miscast roles as a Nazi officer. There's action a-plenty, but it all feels rather repetitive and, like the whole film, a bit of a waste of time.
Rianwar replied
295 weeks ago