User Reviews

You've never seen David McCallum play a moRe anti-heroic characer than he does in director Brian G. Hutton's above-average narcotics thriller "Sol Madrid." McCallum appears as the eponymous protagonist who works undercover for Interpol and lives to bust drug dealers. Indeed, he believes that he shouldn't have to play by the rules because the bad guys don't. The biggest heroin dealer of them all here is Emil Dietrich. "Dirty Dozen" psycho Telly Savalas is charming as the cigarette-smoking villain who lives high, wide, and handsome in his estate in sunny Acapulco, Mexico. Initially, our hero doesn't have his sights set on the urbane Dietrich. He learns from his superior that the mistress of a Mafioso kingpin, Dano Villanova (Rip Torn of "Men in Black"), has left him. Moreover, the man with a computerized mind who knows everything about the Mafia's account, Harry Mitchell (Pat Hingle of "Hang'em High") has fled from the Mafia, too. At first, Sol's mission is to find Mitchell and persuade him to testify against the Mafia. Stacey Woodward (Stella Stevens of "The Ballad of Cable Hogue"), joined Mitchell for $250-thousand dollars. but she didn't accompnay him to Mexico. Sol Madrid breaks into Woodward's bedroom, surprises her, confiscates her loot, and they head off to see Dietrich and his guest Mitchell. Madrid works his way into Dietrich's confidence when he manages to smuggle heroin into California by means of an oil pipeline. The Interpol agent reels in Dietrich afterward for $25 million. Meanwhile, another Interpol agent working undercover in Acapulco is a smiling dude known as Jalisco (Ricardo Montalban of "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan"), and he works as a cabbie when he isn't crusading for law and order. Eventually, Madrid is able to persuade Dietrich to sell him heroin on the premises of his house, something that Dietrich had never done before. During the big bust scene, our hero gets into a fight with the villain, and you can guess who survives the confrontation. Sol Madrid emerges as one of those cops who doesn't take prisoners and he isn't afraid of anything. Eventually, he is able to rescue Stacey from the mitts of the mafia. Once the evil Villanova ferrets Stacey out, he incarcerates her in a cabin and gets her hooked on heroin.

What sets "Sol Madrid" apart from all of McCallum's other films is the savagery of his character. He exposes a double-agent in one scene and shoots the man at point blank range without a qualm and lets him fall down and die. Later, he tangles with a well-dressed Mafioso and drowns the dastard face down in a muddy pool in Mexico. I don't think that I've ever seen David McCallum play a character as brutal of Sol Madrid, and he displays no remorse for his murderous behavior. "Sol Madrid" was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer a year before Hutton made history with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in the explosive World War II thriller "Where Eagles Dare." Hutton's next film was "Kelly's Heroes. If you want to see David McCallum as you have never seen him before, check out "Sol Madrid."

Reminding me of something that Warner Brothers would have done as a B movie in the 1940's, this drug drama is unforgettably bad, and that marked my rating up a bit because it is bad in a good way. This is just as unintentionally funny as some of those poverty row exploitation films that dealt with the issues of drug abuse, just added with a 60's sensibility. The film deals with heroine being shipped to the states from Mexico through the aide of the mob (we get veteran actor Paul Lukas in a cameo as one of the head mafioso's in the beginning of the film), and undercover cop David McCallum's use of prostitute Stella Stevens to infiltrate it thanks to her relationship with supplier Telly Savalas, a john from the past and whose taste in patio furniture (those green chairs, wow!) is laughable. Stevens and McCallum encounter undercover Mexican cop Ricardo Montalban who helps them in their quest, and when Stevens ends up in the hands of the crooks, they get their revenge by going out of their way to turn her into a junkie!

By the end of the 1960's, subject matter in films were being less censored thanks to the lightening up of the production code, and this is one of those films where they really push the boundaries. The film is violent, often tasteless, depressing and a great way to lose hope for a cleansing of society. The characters are not at all well developed, although Savalas and Montalban give admirable performances. McCallum is basically playing his character from "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.", and Stevens bellows a good portion of her lines. There's plenty of action, though, which should keep patient viewers interested, but the plotline isn't really all that strong, and the heroine usage scenes are laughable.