Commando Leopard 1985

In an unnamed Latin American dictatorship, a small band of rebel freedom fighters fights to bring about a less oppressive society. The rebels, led by the enigmatic Enrique Carrasco, Lewis Collins, who has returned to his homeland to take up the fight, strike at a critical hydro-electric dam. Joining Carrasco are his fellow native fighters, the seasoned Smithy, John Steiner, a British mercenary, and Maria, Cristina Donadio, a native ex-medical student turned freedom fighter. After taking down the dam’s security guards, Carrasco’s men plant explosives at a crucial point in the dam wall; when the charges detonate, a powerful tidal surge is unleashed and a nearby bridge that carries a government convoy is utterly destroyed.

On learning of the assault, the President orders the head of the secret police, Colonel Silvera K Klaus Kinski. Carrasco’s group then reaches an impoverished village to seek medical supplies for their wounded companions; the village leader sadly informs them that there are none, but nearby priests tend to the sick and injured. Splitting his force in two, Maria leads a group of the wounded to seek out the priests, while Carrasco, Smithy, and the rest of the fighters return to the dam to press the strike. As they move, Silvera’s deputy Hans Leutenegger leads a brutal attack on the village with flame-thrower equipped helicopters, aiming to crush the rebellion at its source.

At the dam’s site, Carrasco discovers that the government has already constructed a pontoon bridge and is busy recovering the sunken supply convoy. Using scuba diving equipment, Carrasco and Smithy plant time bombs on several of the trucks still submerged, intending to wipe out more of the regime’s munitions. But before the two rebels can slip away from the river, the bombs explode, the sudden pressure wave knocks Smithy unconscious, and he surfaces only to be captured. Carrasco, by contrast, manages to escape with the timely aid of an elderly friend Luciano Pigozzi and his men, who arrive in a truck at the final moment to turn the tide in his favor.

Back in the capital, Smithy finds himself imprisoned among other political detainees, where he learns of a looming plot to free the prisoners and restore a glimmer of hope to their resistance. The story unfolds against a backdrop of political peril, fierce loyalty, and the desperate hope that a dedicated few can challenge an entrenched power, even when the outlook seems grim and the costs are extraordinarily high.