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Released by: Severin Films
Released on: March 28th, 2023.
Director: Tim Burstall
Cast: Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, John Phillip Law, Chris Haywood, John Waters, Sylvia Chang
Year: 1981
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Attack Force Z – Movie Review:
Famous for being an early role for none other than Mel Gibson, 1981’s Attack Force Z, directed by Tim Burstall of Alvin Purple fame, introduces us to the members of "a secret operations unit of the Australian Armed Services in World War Two" that was "made up of volunteers from all branches of the Allied Forces and came under the direct command of General Douglas Macarthur" that operated primarily in the South Pacific region. We're given a brief history of the unit in a text scrawl that opens the film, signed off on by John R. Gardner, the President of Z Special Force Association of New South Wales.
From here, we meet the five members that make up this elite squad - Lieutenant Jan A. Veitch (John Phillip Law), Captain Paul G. Kelly (Mel Gibson), Sargent Danny J. Costello (Sam Neill), Able Seaman A.D. 'Sparrer' Bird (Chris Haywood) and Sub-Lieutenant Ted 'Kingo' King (John Waters, but not the one you're thinking of). When an American Airforce jet crash lands on a Chinese island occupied by Japanese military forces, Attack Force Z is tasked with heading into enemy territory and bringing back the survivors.
When Veitch winds up getting split off from the rest of the crew, he meets and falls for a Chinese woman (Sylvia Chang) whose martial arts expert of a father just might be key in helping his team accomplish their mission successfully.
Written by Roger Marshall, who penned And Now The Screaming Starts, and edited by David Stiven, who cut The Road Warrior, the film is quickly paced and at times fairly tense. The story goes pretty much how you’d expect it to, there aren’t a lot of unexpected twists here, though the ending gets some credit for at least deviating a little bit from the action movie clichés that the movie is rife will. Still, there’s good entertainment value to be had here. Although the film was seemingly made on a pretty modest budget, the action scenes are nicely staged and pretty exciting and the production values are, overall, more than sufficient if never super amazing.
What makes this one as watchable as it is? It’s the cast. Say what you will about Mel Gibson, at this point and after a series of pretty massive missteps, he’s fair game, but the man has screen presence and charisma and he brings it to Attack Force Z in a pretty big way. He’s eminently watchable here and it’s easy to see, even in this early film, how and why he’d become the Hollywood leading man that he was. Sam Neill is also very good here, equally likeable and charismatic – even charming in spots. Top-billed John Phillip Law is also in very fine form here, though he doesn’t deliver a performance as strong as his Australian counterparts. Haywood and Waters also do solid work, really all five members of the force are very well-cast and wind up elevating Attack Force Z from a typical B-grade war film into something a fair bit more interesting than that.
Attack Force Z – Blu-ray Review:
Severin Films brings Attack Force Z to Blu-ray framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and in AVC encoded 1080p high definition with the transfer taken from a new 2k scans of the original 35mm negative. Picture quality is pretty nice. There are a few scratches here and there and the image is naturally grainy but colors look really strong here, and black levels and flesh tones fare very well. Detail is generally pretty impressive and the image always looks nice and filmic, showing no issues with noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression problems.
The only audio option for this release is a 24-bit English language DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, with optional English subtitles and a separate English SDH option also provided. Audio quality is pretty decent. The gun shots pack a decent punch and the dialogue is clean, clear and balanced. The score also sounds quite good, it has some appreciable range to it.
The main extra on the disc is The Z Men Debriefed, a featurette carried over from the 2004 Umbrella Entertainment DVD release made up of interviews with Executive Producer John McCallum and Actors John Waters and Chris Haywood running twenty-eight minutes. It’s an interesting interview that does a nice job of exploring how Burstall came to direct, where some of the inspiration for the movie came from, working with the different cast and crew members and a fair bit more.
Finishing up the extras is a photo gallery, a theatrical trailer, menus and chapter selection options.
Attack Force Z - The Final Word:
Attack Force Z is a pretty enjoyable, if fairly predictable, slice of eighties action moviemaking made all the better by a really strong cast. Severin’s Blu-ray edition offers the film up with a really nice presentation and an interesting featurette covering the movie’s history.
Click on the images below, or right click and open in a new window, for full sized Attack Force Z Blu-ray screen caps!
