When Kommando Leopard was in production it was already the most expensive swiss-italian movie ever made. Fifteen million francs was spent on this action extra-vaganza starring Lewis Collins, Klaus Kinski and a bunch of mostly swiss and german characters actors. And yeah, Mike Monty and Luciano Pigozzi also shows up in minor parts. The director is of course Antonio Margheriti, a man who went from gothic horror and sci-fi to become one of the most skillful italian action directors ever lived. He maybe lacked some of Castellari's personality and the crazy style of Mattei, but could set up extremly spectacular action pieces, worthy a Hollywood-movie.What we have here is some random story about freedom fighters in South America (which of course is The Philippines). Lewis Collins plays the leader, and though he's a über-brit, Carrasco as a name fits him well. Kinski is the dictators closest man takes the power himself when the dictator becomes to weak and silly (prefering to concentrate on his make up before speeches than anything else).
So that's the story. It's bascially a good, not badly written movie, that revolves around a couple of very impressive action scenes. The first one is cool, where the freedom fighters blows up a huge dam. Then we have the famous airplane-bombing! Here Margheriti uses really detailed and wellmade miniatures, that blows up in slow motion. Inbetween there's a lot of shooting, more explosions, and superior action direction. This is among the best I've seen in such a movie. It's huge, expensive and has advanced takes - far from the more primitiv (but great) style of Mattei.
If you buy the cheap ABUK-release there's a very entertaining vintage making of to. Crap quality, but cool to see behind the scenes of this kinda of movie. A bonus is a couple of scenes where Kinski get's furious and starts screaming, and one where he have problem answering the questions because his girlfriend is to close and he's getting excited.
For fans of eighties action, like me :)
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