Dogtags - Il collare della vergogna

My review was written in February 1990 after a Greenwich Village screening.

"Dog Tags" is a standard issue patrol film, set during the Vietnam War. Pretentious direction and laudable technical skill fail to lift this film from action pic status to art house entry.

Filmmaker Romano Scavolini, known Stateside for his 1981 feature pic "Nightmare" after numerous Italian film credits as director and cameraman, proves himself her a talented helmer of individual setpieces but unable to put them together into a coherent whole.

British thesp Clive Wood (also in "Buster") ably portrays a commando code-named Cecil who saves some GIs from imprisonment in Tiger Cages. Instead of heading for rescue pickup, Wood and his ragtag band of soldiers are ordered by the captain (Mike Monty, a regular in Philippines-lensed pics) on a secret mission across the border into Cambodia.

Instead of finding secret information in a downed helicopter, Wood discovers four boxes of gold and the men predictably turn greedy en route to a cynical finish.

Film's strong points include John McCallum's sharp widescreen lensing, a vigorous musical score byJohn Scott and sustained tension within several harrowing sequences.

Pic is sabotaged by extremely crude editing (which makes the appearance of a pretty Vietnamese girl and her family tagging along with the heroes needlessly cryptic) and an unnecessary device of dividing the story into separate "acts, plus prolog and epilogue. Tale is unconvincingly told in flashback by author Chris Hilton.

Tech credits, particularly vivid Dolby sound recording and some spectacular explosions, are on a par with big-budget films in this genre.