Dir: James Glickenhaus
Star: Ken Wahl, Alberta Watson, Jeremiah Sullivan, Klaus Kinski

It just seems wrong somehow, that it will take you considerably longer to read this article than to watch the entirety of Klaus Kinski’s appearance in the film. For he makes his first entrance timestamped at 31:34 seconds into proceedings, sporting a very natty set of white ski gear, which matches both his hair and his pale complexion. He is last seen, less than three and a half minutes later, at 35:02, scurrying away from a cable-car control panel. We’ll get to the specifics of why later. Let’s just say that, even by the standards of Klaus cashing the check, this was a remarkably brief appearance.

I feared writing my standard 1,000 words on this particular entry would be a challenge. But fortunately, there’s an interview with Glickenhaus on the DVD, where he talks about Kinski – again, probably for longer than his appearance! All quotes below are from him, beginning with the director’s explanation about how Kinski got involved with the film.

We were monitoring the budget as we went along, and we were actually doing pretty well… It turned out we had a little extra money, so I said, let’s go after a little bigger star for that part. This was in the middle of shooting, and we called up Klaus, and he said “Okay, well send me the script.” And he called back and said. “This is ridiculous, it’s a teeny part! I’m a star, I can’t do this!” I said, “Look, I don’t want to insult you. Here’s what I’m willing to pay for this. Yes or no?” And he said, “Oh, okay, I’ll go.”

Writer, producer and director Glickenhaus is quite interesting himself; he came to cinematic prominence as writer/director of 1980’s The Exterminator. This hyper-violent vigilante flick was labeled by Roger Ebert “a sick example of the almost unbelievable descent into gruesome savagery in American movies.” Needless to say, this didn’t stop it from being a big enough hit that Glickenhaus got significantly more funding for The Soldier. Afterwards, he gave Jackie Chan his first Western role in The Protector, but eventually quit the film business in the mid-nineties, and now runs Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, an ultra-high end custom car manufacturer.

Klaus was a trip from the second he got to the set. He basically tried to attack anything that walked and was female. The PA that we sent to get him, started sitting next to him and wound up, I think, getting a bus back to the hotel where we were.

This is also squarely in the wheelhouse of the cold war, though it’s perhaps less jingoistic than I expected. The central focus is a threat to nuke the Saudi Arabian oil fields, unless Israel pulls out of the West Bank. Given this would render half the world’s oil supplies useless for 300 years, and probably bring about the collapse of Western civilization, allowing communism to take over, this is not a good thing. America, in particular, is unimpressed, and decides that if Israel won’t pull out voluntarily, then they will go into the West Bank and eject them. The Israelis aren’t too happy about this, obviously. Fortunately, there is an alternative, our nameless but titular hero (Wahl), and his four colleagues, making up an extra-judicial task-force, responsible only – indeed, known only – to the head of the CIA.

One thing I do remember about Klaus, he was very concerned about the outfit that he wore. He had very particular ideas on how it should look. So we took him shopping at the fanciest ski-place in St. Anton, and he picked out this very tight, white ski parka that was way too tight to ski in. But the pants that he picked out were… he had in mind he wanted to show off… I don’t know exactly what, but they were so tight it was kinda silly. I was afraid he was going to cut off his circulation and pass out… At the end he disappeared with them, even though he was supposed to give them back to us.

The obvious villains in this are the Russians, who would benefit massively [not least. because they have most of the uncontaminated oil supplies]. However, the Soldier doesn’t think they are directly responsible, and believes a rogue faction of the KGB are likely responsible. To see if this is the case, he arranges a meeting with Dracha (Kinski). He is a Russian agent, someone the CIA director says “Is absolutely loyal to the KGB, but he has always been straight with us in the past.” So, a meeting is arranged at St. Anton in Austria, but it turns out Dracha is part of the plot, sending the Soldier up in a cable-car at which his minions fire an RPG.

The Soldier escapes, leaping from the cable-car just before it explodes. There then follows a rather good ski-chase down the mountain, ending with him rotating 180 degrees in mid-air to unleash a burst of automatic fire at his pursuers. It has to be said, the action overall is nifty, culminating at the end when our hero flies a Porsche over the Berlin Wall into East Berlin. There, he tells the Russians if they don’t defuse their bomb in Saudi Arabia, he’ll nuke Moscow. For his team has taken over a missile silo in Kansas – apparently, you can get into these facilities by hiding in the trunk of a car. Nice to know they are less secure than your average drive-in movie theater.

I didn’t see him again until Cannes when he was there with Werner Herzog, who he had just filmed a film about an opera-house in the jungle, and bringing a boat over the mountains, and he was completely drunk. Just coincidentally, I was there just in the room – it wasn’t that I had gone there to see him or anything. Someone asked him about Werner Herzog and he said, “He’s an idiot, an asshole, an incompetent who doesn’t know how to make films. And that guy” – he pointed to me – “He knows how to make films!” But this was just Klaus. I mean, no-one took him seriously.

While technically solid, it all feels very fragmented, scenes bouncing from continent to continent, without much cohesion. At times, it seems it’s trying to be an American version of a Bond film, except the Soldier never succeeds in coming over as a memorable character. The Tangerine Dream score is quite good, though it does irrevocably lock this as an eighties film. Otherwise, while passably entertaining, it’s unquestionably one of the most minor entries in the Kinski filmography.