Sometimes the past is best left undisturbed. This picture was a favourite of mine and used to play often on 70's television, usually in a late-night slot. I had thought of it as a tense, gritty movie full of exciting action and superb performances. Then it mysteriously disappeared from our screens, so when the opportunity arose recently to view it once again, I jumped at the chance.
Oh dear.
Based on the novel 'The Ordeal Of Major Grigsby' by John Sherlock, 'The Last Grenade' begins in the Congo. A mercenary unit, headed by Major Harry Grigsby ( Stanley Baker ), is waiting to be picked up by a helicopter by one of their number, Kip Thompson ( Alex Cord ). Instead he has changed sides and wipes them out en masse - laughing like a maniac as he does so - before blowing up their camp for good measure. Only Grigsby survives, swearing revenge.
Some time later, he is back in England and recovering from tuberculosis in a sanitarium when the British Government ( naturally bothered by an American mercenary's activities in a foreign land ) asks him to kill Thompson who has been making a nuisance of himself in China by making cross border raids. You would think they would prefer to use someone in better health, but that's politicians for you.
Taking along other mercenaries - including Julian Glover and John Thaw ( criminally wasted in such a small role ), he sets about hunting for his hated adversary. They eventually meet, but instead of killing Grigsby where he stands, Thompson puts him in solitary confinement, from which he is able to escape easily. This lapse in logic is not isolated; as the film progresses, other opportunities crop up for Thompson to remove Grigsby, but for reasons unexplained, he chooses not to do so. We know of course why - the story would have ended there and then.
Harry then begins an affair with Katherine ( Honor Blackman ), the good-looking wife of General Whiteley ( Richard Attenborough - also wasted in this movie ), and considers calling off the search for Thompson ( forgetting of course that he has been paid to do the job by British tax-payers ) and settle down to a life of domestic bliss.
Thompson has other ideas and kills Katherine ( he was really after her husband, but never mind ). So now Harry is full of fury once more, and storms off into the rainy forests to look for Kip. You think a big fight is coming, but no, it does not and suddenly the credits are rolling up the screen.
Watching this the other night I wondered how on earth the writers - one of whom was James Mitchell, creator of 'Callan' - thought that they could get away with such blatantly obvious plot holes, some of which are big enough for Thompson to fly his helicopter through. Even my wife ( a confirmed soap opera addict ) spotted them, which tells you all you need to know.
Baker makes a convincing mercenary - all moustache and muscles, upper lip trembling in anticipation of the final kill - more so than the cast of 'The Wild Geese' combined. Harry using a corpse as a trap for Thompson is in character, but his decision to stop hunting for Thompson to move in with Katherine is not. As the giggling psycho, Alex Cord's performance surely must have been a big influence on Christopher Walken when he played 'Max Zorin' in the Bond movie 'A View To A Kill' fifteen years later. Ray Brooks is around too, but got better dialogue when he did 'Mr.Benn'.
On the plus side, there is impressive location filming in Spain ( doubling for the Congo ) and China. The opening massacre gets the film off to a thundering start. But from then on, it is all downhill, as the plot wanders around in circles. We do not even get to see Grigsby and Thompson engage in hand-to-hand combat. Gordon Flemyng, the director, was also responsible for the two 'Dr.Who' movies of the '60's starring Peter Cushing, and you will find more excitement in those than this.
If you enjoyed 'The Last Grenade' in 1970, then to preserve your happy memories do not watch it now. Believe me, 'The Wild Geese' is 'Apocalypse Now' by comparison.
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