A group of adventurers perform a heist on a gold mining plant. They intend to flee to nearby Brazil, but their helicopter gets badly damaged. After an emergency landing they find themselves stranded deep in the heart of the jungle, together with a much-coveted cargo of gold bars...
The movie highlights an important problem, to wit the high ecological cost of gold mining. These last decades Guyana has been flooded with illegal gold miners who use toxic products, destroy the primeval jungle and hunt rare animals. (Legal goldmining is supposed to be safer, although I would hesitate to give it a certificate of virginal innocence.) As is often the case, this kind of crime is closely linked to other forms of criminality such as human trafficking, prostitution, bribery, fiscal fraud and money laundering. There is also a detrimental impact on the local population, which gets kicked off ancestral lands or has to navigate between rival gangs of great violence and callousness.
So the movie certainly deserves credit for pointing out the various social and environmental ills of Guyana, quite a lot of which are caused by hyper-civilized Westerners laughing all the way jusqu'à la banque. The movie is also notable for its beautiful scenery, which was filmed with a great deal of love and competence : the jungle has rarely been more magical.
I can see where the various makers were trying to go here - one of the great crime or adventure movies of the 1960's and 1970's, with stars like Belmondo, Delon or Ventura. Sadly "600 kilos" neglects to create characters that are living, breathing people you care about. As a result you don't worry too much about the characters living or dying. When one of these characters vanishes with the rose, you don't think something like "What a tragedy, Jean-Paul was still suffering over the death of his wife, how are his three children going to cope ?", you think "Was this the short-tempered guy with the beard, or the other short-tempered guy with the beard ?"
Well, next time better I suppose...
The movie highlights an important problem, to wit the high ecological cost of gold mining. These last decades Guyana has been flooded with illegal gold miners who use toxic products, destroy the primeval jungle and hunt rare animals. (Legal goldmining is supposed to be safer, although I would hesitate to give it a certificate of virginal innocence.) As is often the case, this kind of crime is closely linked to other forms of criminality such as human trafficking, prostitution, bribery, fiscal fraud and money laundering. There is also a detrimental impact on the local population, which gets kicked off ancestral lands or has to navigate between rival gangs of great violence and callousness.
So the movie certainly deserves credit for pointing out the various social and environmental ills of Guyana, quite a lot of which are caused by hyper-civilized Westerners laughing all the way jusqu'à la banque. The movie is also notable for its beautiful scenery, which was filmed with a great deal of love and competence : the jungle has rarely been more magical.
I can see where the various makers were trying to go here - one of the great crime or adventure movies of the 1960's and 1970's, with stars like Belmondo, Delon or Ventura. Sadly "600 kilos" neglects to create characters that are living, breathing people you care about. As a result you don't worry too much about the characters living or dying. When one of these characters vanishes with the rose, you don't think something like "What a tragedy, Jean-Paul was still suffering over the death of his wife, how are his three children going to cope ?", you think "Was this the short-tempered guy with the beard, or the other short-tempered guy with the beard ?"
Well, next time better I suppose...