Waste of time

i must have seen a different film!!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

If you've ever wondered what the high country of New Zealand's south island looks like, this will provide decent introduction. It looks a little like the video clips we've seen of the Falkland Island, only with mountains, rocky snow-veined crags.The story features Ken Wahl as an adventurous helicopter pilot, his bibulous side kick Donald Pleasance, and the requisite young lady who gets swept up in the race to find the Yankee Zephyr, an American C47 that crashed during WWII, carrying a cargo of Purple Hearts, whiskey, cash, and gold bars. I don't know why everyone in the movies finds wrecks filled with treasure. All the old crashed airplanes I''ve found contained nothing. The wrecked ships were worse.In any case the three good guys are doing their best to find the wreck, the drunken Donald Pleasance not being too sure of its location. In hot pursuit are the bad guys, led by George Peppard, one of those suave villains who sounds like he graduated from college and is dead set on demonstrating it. I can't locate his accent. I won't tell you who wins.It's all fast paced with obvious direction by David Hemmings. The editing is a bit clumsy and the film is overscore. The music is mostly generic adventure but shoehorns in a little Sibelius. Leslie An Warren looks pretty good.It's harmless entertainment, along the lines of "High Road to China."

A solid film with exceptional production values a few flaws. What really surprises me about this film is just how well acted it is by the supporting cast and the three protagonists. Combine that with some very good cinematography and you have a respectable film.Toss in a very sumptuous looking New Zealand background and you have a an exceptional production. The only downside to this production is perhaps the casting of George Peppard as the mercenary antagonist. His accent and overall performance are very misplaced and almost serve as comic relief for a film that needed a good solid villain to anchor it. Peppard nearly derails this film with a horrible effete British accent, but the action and the three leads.The character driven moments are finely staged, and the action sequences are old fashioned classic pre-CGI film making. Aeriel sequences and boat chases, and even a few fire fights are all in this film combined with the elements I already mentioned. It's just a few notes shy of being an outstanding film. As it is now it's just a good action film with good drama, some comedy, and one mis-cast villain. It's worth seeing once.Enjoy.

This is a nice campy little film that the whole family might enjoy IF you can find a copy anywhere. However there are many unrealistic "shoot em up" scenes, which may leave the young to think that gunplay has no consequences. I won't describe the plot as given elsewhere.There are two great helicopter chase scenes in the film (reminiscent of "the Gauntlet") that really show off some of the backcountry beauty of New Zealand that frankly, you would not be able to see without a helicopter.There are also many later scenes of "expert maneuvers" in helicopter, such as "quickstop-pedalturn-reverse heading", a "hammerhead pushover" or two, "sidewall dismount", and "confined spaces settling". The pilotage is excellent.The film also shows some of the wild ruggedness of New Zealand's South Island, where(at the time the film was made at least in 1981) the only paved roads are in larger towns and cities, and the country thoroughfares are primarily just "metal" (gravel roads) though always well maintained. And yes, the peaks really are that jagged. No special effects.Donald Pleasance, as a happy go lucky over the hill sot, plays his character to perfection. He makes numerous muttering quips similar to the humorous mutterings you hear in the vintage "a.a.p." Popeye cartoons. Unfortunately, many of these mutterings in RFYZ are unintelligible without multiple rewinds and equalizing to hear what is said. A bit frustrating, as there are probably a few lost jokes in there.George Peppard's accent is a very forced upper class snotty, which conforms to his portrayed character adequately.Ken Wahl and Lesley Ann Warren's characters play well off of each other to establish a typical independent rugged male vs. coddled entitled wenging female dynamic that would be "toxic" if not for nuances of a smoldering mutual sexual interest. There is one very brief fully clothed and appearing to have been intentionally directed "doggie style" movement between Wahl and Warren masked in a "struggling to escape" context that adds a subliminal mild eroticism to the play, but will go right over the heads of the kiddies. (Though may well spark Mom and Dad's fantasies once the kiddies have gone to sleep . . . .) There are no overt sexual references in the film that the kiddies would understand, however there is a brief "wet slip" scene which does faintly reveal the nature of LAW's upper "endowments".Shooting violence is significant, including use of assault weapons, but amazingly through the expenditures of hundreds of rounds of ammo, nobody ever gets hurt(hooray for Hollywood), nor is their accompanying gore.Conversational and expletive profanity (all but the F word and genital synonyms) are typical for middle class language, and would likely only be offensive to "devout" types, though may be inappropriate to guarded "inculcation" of pre-teens. Overall a fun "adventure" type film that all can enjoy as long as the young'uns are thoroughly coached or cognizant that in real life all the gunplay would really end up with lot's of dead people. And a must see for anyone interested in the wilds of New Zealand that could otherwise not be seen, or any student of rotor-wing aviation. Though all shots are exterior, so accurate control inputs are not shown. Choppers used are Hughes 269, Hughes 500C and Bell 206.

On the one hand, it is possible to view this film only as an attempt to make a star out of Ken Wahl, whose "The Soldier" had some box-office success. However, the film is infinitely more intresting if taken as an action-adventure in the mold that Spielberg would adopt for "Raiders of the Lost Ark", a film which when released around the same time, served to bury "Race" for all but the dilligent. Certainly the film is similar in certain respects, and may be seen as the first of the imitators, its plot and characters anticipating Robert Zemeckis' hit adventure, "Romancing the Stone". But it is individual enough to warrant some attention.It was a US/Australia/New Zealand co-production, made by English actor/director David Hemmings on marvellous New Zealand locations. The story focuses on two helicopter pilots and hunters who search for the wreckage of an American plane reported missing during World War II, and carrying a large amount of gold and money. Naturally as the villains appear (led by dapper George Peppard), the film becomes a chase scenario in an agreeably old-fashioned mode, populated by eccentrics.Donald Pleasance effortlessly steals his scenes, with a characterization resembling that in John Sturges' western epic comedy, "The Hallelujah Trail" some fifteen years earlier. And tpical of the movie's allusive nature, the music score by Brian May ("Mad Max") pays tribute to the theme from John Sturges' "The Great Escape", in which Pleasance also starred.With sundrenched visuals, and a Europeanized use of open-frame compositions, this adventure is used by Hemmings to explore the lengths to which people are prepared to go to to justify their self-image and self-indulgence. It is less about obsession than about pride. Spielberg would also examine this theme in his later films, as would Hemmings, but to vastly different results.In many respects, it is a minor film, and unlikely to come under any retrospective scrutiny. But for what it sets out to be, it is lean, charming and entertaining in a way that many film's strive for, but rarely achieve. A curiosity, for completists.