The Reel Review
A decade after surviving a brutal slaughter by Nazi Germans in occupied 1945 France, an American aviator travels to South America to seek vengeance against the Nazi war criminals who are now in hiding. Jacob Keohane (Halloween Kills) and Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy) star in this action-adventure war thriller.
Condor’s Nest is quite the ambitious poor man’s knockoff of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, complete with lots of brutal killings and an epic, grandiose score. The first half actually is pretty riveting, before devolving into a sluggish and even farcical midsection. Writer/director Phil Blattenberger seemed uncertain what kind of low budget war movie he wanted to make, so we get several rolled into one.
Keohane, Vosloo and Bruce Davison (Ozark, Longtime Companion) appear as the usual line-up of war trope characters we’ve become accustomed to seeing in WWII-era Nazi flicks, with Corrine Britti as the lone woman – a tough talking, resourceful Jewish assassin. Condor’s Nest isn’t that bad but its corny dialogue and a really contrived twist also keeps it from being good.
REEL FACTS
• The opening scene’s B-17 interiors were shot in a B-17 named “Texas Rangers,” which crashed a year later, making Condor’s Nest its final film.
• Condor’s Nest is the second feature film from writer/director Phil Blattenberger – his first was the 2018 Vietnam War drama Point Man.
• Condor’s Nest was filmed in Utah, North Carolina and Texas, and in Iquitos and Cuzco, Peru.
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