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A certain Luis Morel Stuart seems to be the only survivor of Che
Guevara's gang of rebels, and now he seems to have relocated to Colombia
and gone into bigtime drugrunning - but unfortunately, nobody knows what
he looks like these days. So the CIA sends down its top agent Carpenter
(Christopher Mitchum) to track him down, and the only clue he has is that
Morel has a scar on his neck. In Colombia, Carpenter meets with a
drugrunning couple that wants to help him take down Morel's operations to
move in on his turf, at the same time promising the CIA to not deliver
drugs to the USA anymore - and the local CIA contact Myra (Brigitte
Lahaie), a former girlfriend of his, even tells Carpenter to accept. At
the same time, Carpenter has also met and fallen in love with Elena
(Alicia Moro), daughter of local rich man Montana (Christopher Lee) - who
is eventually revealed to be Luis Morel Stuart, the very man Carpenter is
to bring down, himself. Of course, eventually Carpenter helps Elena to
find out her father is an evil man, all the baddies get their just
desserts (often at the hands of one another), Myra is allowed to die a
heroine's death, and in the end Elena flies off with Carpenter to
God-knows-where. Action veteran Richard Harrison plays Carpenter's boss,
but he really doesn't have all that much to do besides from constantly
insulting Carpenter. If given the chance, Jess Franco can be an
amazingly stylish, inventive and simply unusual director - but his
strengths are the erotic and horror genres. When it comes to action on the
other hand, Franco tends to underperform. In that respect, Dark Mission
is actually quite good, by far less disappointing than some of Franco's
other action flicks, and even quite coherent for the film of a man who has
never paid much attention to actual storytelling (and in his best films,
he doesn't have to). In fact, Dark Mission has the look and feel of your
typical made-for-television movie: It was made on a low budget but at
least features a few recognizable faces, the action is no better than
functional, the direction impersonal to the point of blandness, there are
no memorable setpieces - plus (and that's unusual for a Jess Franco flick)
there is no nudity involved. In all, if you want to see how Jess Franco
handles an action flick, this is probably one of the better examples, but
don't make the mistake and think this film is in any way representing his
oeuvre as a whole in any way.
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