BRITISH STANLEY BAKER JUNGLES THROUGH 'THE LAST GRENADE'

Alex Cord with Stanley Baker and Honor Blackman in THE LAST GRENADE Year: 1970 Rates: **1/2

While THE LAST GRENADE is perhaps the longest 90-minutes you'll ever spend on an action flick, it actually needed to be a half-an-hour longer, right up front, since once-good-mercenary-turned-double-crossing Alex Cord is so deadly so soon, there's nothing to base things on when former partner Stanley Baker feels so betrayed...

Directed by Gordon Flemyng, the beautiful jungles (and crowded city) of Hong Kong China are shown in revealing wide shots, not only to establish the location but to show it off... 

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE

Meanwhile Baker and his men, including muscular Andrew Keir, token black Rafer Johnson along with Julian Glover and John Thaw, randomly traipse the jungle where Cord — like Kurtz from HEART OF DARKNESS made famous later in APOCALYPSE NOW — has become an eccentric kingpin surrounded by trained Asian foot soldiers...

So while there are some decent action sequences involving Baker, his affair with general's wife Honor Blackman (blandly married to Richard Attenborough) ruins the pace, leaving only a miscast Cord... speaking in a bad southern drawl and adorned in ironically mundane attire... to be killed simply because, well, he's the villain. And Baker isn't. 

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE

Andrew Keir, Julian Glover and John Thaw in THE LAST GRENADE with Rafer Johnson

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE

Richard Attenborough in THE LAST GRENADE

Honor Blackman and Richard Attenborough in THE LAST GRENADE

Julian Glover and John Thaw in THE LAST GRENADE

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE and Rafer Johnson

Stanley Baker in THE LAST GRENADE and Andrew Keir

Alex Cord in THE LAST GRENADE

Alex Cord in THE LAST GRENADE with Rafer Johnson and Stanley Baker

John Thaw in THE LAST GRENADE