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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»1980s Movies»Movies 1981
    Movies 1981 Movies A 2 Mins Read

    Attack Force Z (1981)

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    Z Special Force – also known as the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD) – was a secret Australian Special Forces reconnaissance and sabotage unit during World War II. It was made up of volunteers from all branches of the Allied Forces and was commanded directly by General Douglas Macarthur.

    The Force carried out 284 wartime missions in the Pacific. The most publicised of these were the successful canoe raid on Singapore Harbour from the Krait and the subsequent Rimau raid in which all 23 participants were either killed in action or executed.

    The events depicted in the film are an honest and unflinching account of the type of operation carried out by the unit during World Warr II with the force deployed to recover the passengers of a downed Allied plane – including the Minister of War – in the Japanese occupied Dutch East Indies with the help of an underground Chinese resistance movement.

    Captain Paul Kelly (Mel Gibson) leads a multinational group of derring-doers on the secret mission, and the screen is soon awash with corpses and tomato sauce.

    Despite a cast including Gibson and Sam Neill, who both went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood, the acting is pretty standard average Aussie fare, and the film is a dull, cliche-ridden affair.

    The movie – filmed in Taiwan and originally titled Zedmen – performed badly at the box office in Australia.

    After a poor run in cinemas in Melbourne in June 1982, it wasn’t released anywhere else in Australia. It found more success as a video release on Roadshow Home Video.

    Captain Paul Kelly
    Mel Gibson
    Lieutenant Jan Veitch
    John Phillip Law
    Sergeant Danny Costello
    Sam Neill
    Able Seaman ‘Sparrer’ Bird
    Chris Haywood
    Sub Lt. Ted ‘Kingo’ King
    John Waters
    Chien Hua
    Sylvia Chang
    Shaw Hu
    O Ti
    Lin Chan-Lang
    Chun-Hsiung Ko
    Watanabe
    Lung Shuan
    Imanaka
    Yuan Yi
    Wong Chong
    Su Wei
    Lee Chang
    Hsa Li-Wen
    Ed Ayres
    Val Champion
    Oshiko Imoguchi
    Yu Wang

    Director
    Tim Burstall

    Video

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