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Years ago, they killed his parents, but now Ray Castor (Christopher
Mitchum) has grown up and is ready to retaliate ... so all over Europe,
men start to be killed, which causes an American organisaion to send over
retired top cop Kiley (Karl Malden) over to investigate, and he has soon
found out that Alfredi (Raf Vallone) is the next on Castor's list, but
Alfredi is of course way too proud to accept the assistance of an ex-cop
and rather trusts his own men. Meanwhile, Castor has hooked up with
Alfredi's private secretary (Claudine Auger) to get close enough to him -
but somehow, his first assassination attempt fails thanks to Kiley, who
isn't one to give up just because Alfredi turned him down. So Castor goes
kidnaps Alfredi's student daughter Tania (Olivia Hussey) in order to get
close enough to him for a second attempt through the girl, whom he holds
on a houseboat somewhere out on the open sea. At first, Tania is terrified
and tries every trick in the book to escape - without success though - but
after a while, she and Castor start showing interest for each other, and
since she never felt understood by her father to begin with, she
eventually falls in love with Castor. Then Castor makes a second attempt
at Alfredi's life at a bullfight, but when he's already got him right in
front of his gun, he jsut can't bring himself to pull the trigger, since
after all, Alfredi is Tania's father ... and suddenly Castor finds himself
on the run from Alfredi's men and only barely makes it back to his
houseboat, gravely injured. Meanwhile though, Kiley has found his way to
the houseboat as well, and he is quick to put the handcuffs on Castor and
take him and Tania with him ... but when he sees how much Tania is
actually in love with him and how he treats his wounds, he is touched and
decides to let them go scot-free. In the final scene that seems to have
little to do with the rest of the film, Kiley is back in New York and is
riddled by machinegun bullets. Granted, this thriller does
feature some nice action sequences, especially the final car and bike
chase is well-staged (if not entirely plausible), but on the whole, the
film's plot is just a bit too constructed to remain believable, and does
eventually lose narrative threads along the way. besides that, Christopher
Mitchum might to an extent look like his father, but he sure can't act
like his father: While Robert Mitchum turned understatement into an
artform, Christopher Mitchum makes it more resemble underachievement - and
his platinum blond, Doris Day-style hairdo doesn't help him get his
character across one bit. All that said, the film is not a total loss,
rather an ok action thriller that you might have forgotten within a day or
two.
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