Watch The Human Factor For Free

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Edward Dmytryk ended his feature directorial career with this rather routine action film which is a little sluggish. The Human Factor was hardly the kind of film that a celebrated director should have gone out on. After all, Dmytryk has such classics as Murder My Sweet, Crossfire, and The Caine Mutiny to his credit.George Kennedy is our hero/protagonist who has his wife and three children executed by terrorists who made his the first targeted family of an extortion plan to kill an American family every three days if the USA does not pony up some large coin of the realm.As Kennedy is a computer programmer working and living in Rome he has access to some real intelligence gathering machinery. Colleagues like John Mills and Rita Tushingham help. Kennedy upsets Italian police inspector Raf Vallone with his pro-active approach and doing his own investigation.The Human Factor is a slow paced film, but it does have a nice action packed climax where Kennedy takes care of business the way Dirty Harry Callahn would. You'll enjoy if you can wait that long.

***SPOILERS*** "Death Wish" like film with the big and as harmless as a Teddy Bear John Kingsdale, George Kennedy, going ballistic when his family is massacred by a gang of international terrorists in their home in Naples Italy. Working for NATO as an electronic expert Kingsdale with the help of his computer expert friend Mike McAllister, John Mills, uses NATO's most state of the art commuter equipment, the ironically named 9/11 computer system, to track down his family's murderers and exact brutal revenge, not justice, on them.Going against his good friend McAllister's advice in letting the law do the job of tracking his family's killers down Kingsdale with an 8% chance, according to he 9/11 computer system, of getting the job done and 92% chance of getting killed in trying goes all out in what seems like a kamikaze like attempt to finish the bloody job that he's about to start. A job that will leave a trail of corpses, terrorists and their victims, that is to end in a bloodbath at the NATO commissary in Naples!Big George Kennedy despite his menacing size seems so out of shape that there's times in many of the movie chase scenes that he looks like he'll collapse from sheer exhaustion in chasing terrorists 100 pounds lighter and 20 years younger then himself. Getting a hold of one of the terrorists leader's the American Taylor, Thomas Hunter, Kennedy or Kingsdale needed a car to catch up with him in that there's no way to convince the audience that he could have done that on his own with just shoe leather! Huffing and puffing his way through the movie where in some scenes it looked like he needed oxygen to stay on his feet the almost out of breath Kingsdale finally gets to the NATO commissary where the terrorist group headed by Palestinian born Kamal, Frank Alvance, is hold up with some 100 hostages. ***SPOILERS*** Going into action before help, the Italian police and NATO forces, can arrive at the NATO commissary by driving a stolen car through it's front entrance Kingsdale blasts away at anything in his gun sights taking out the entire terrorist crew with Kamel the only survivor making a mad dash to the commissary's exits. With the heavy footed, at well over 250 pounds, Kingsdale catching up with him he makes sure that Kamel never gets a chance to stand trial by pumping a full magazine, that he reloaded his 9.mm with, of slugs into him!

** ENDING SPOILERS (which might save you the bother of watching it!!) **NATO electronics expert Kennedy is out for blood after his family are done in by terrorists, with Mills on hand rather incongruously to give technical advice. The most worrying facet of this appallingly scripted and unprepossessingly staged bit of misanthropic reactionary violence is its marking of the passing of the surely senile Dmytryk; however its apogee of tastelessness is reached in the climactic supermarket shoot-out, replete with women and children cowering on the floor whilst blowsily unlikely 'Lone Wolf' Kennedy riddles his adversaries with very visceral holes amidst a maelstrom of baked beans and soap powder.

Although it surely didn't wow me, I think this movie had an interesting and somewhat suspenseful storyline. George Kennedy was practically a superhero here: running up flights of stairs and jumping rooftops without pausing for breath, nailing every target with his trusty handgun, and fighting the bad guys despite knife and bullet wounds. How did he do it? Anyway, it was an extremely serious film without a joke or gag in there (hard to believe from this that George went on to be in the Naked Gun trilogy), so don't put it on if you're almost out of anti-depressants. You can have a bit of fun by counting Pepsi references, though. I counted 3.