this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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Action Movies

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Action Movies

!action_movies@piefed.social

A community for any movie with a chase, punch, kick, stab, shot, crash or explosion, or preferably all of the above and plenty of 'em.

Everything from Armour of God to Zulu, from Above the Law to Zatoichi.

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TIL in 1982 William Shatner paid $10,000-15,000 to an ex-Green Beret named Bo Gritz leading a mercenary force on a raid into Laos (theoutline.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by klu9@piefed.social to c/action_movies@piefed.social
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Shatner said he was buying "the rights to Gritz's life story". But by paying before the "POW rescue" raid happened, while Gritz was actively & openly fund-raising for the raid, was he basically helping to fund the raid?

Perhaps less surprisingly, Clint Eastwood also chipped in $30,000.

And even less surprisingly, the raid was a complete failure and Gritz was never able to provide any evidence whatsoever of US POWs in South East Asia after the end of the US-Vietnam War.

Gritz was supposedly an inspiration for fictional characters including John Rambo and Hannibal Smith of The A-Team... and later became involved in various far-right activities (including becoming the "unwitting" presidential running mate of KKK leader David Duke), more conspiracy fantasies & setting up his own religious/military commune.

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[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 points 19 hours ago

I guess it comes down to whether Bo's personal and business finances were separate, and if Shatner knew that at the time. Honestly, I think you could find much more questionable activities by Bo than this example, a mission to recover Prisoners of War.