American Renegades, also known simply as Renegades, is a film in the action thriller space. Directed by Steven Quale, the film was released on January 22, 2019, on DVD and Blu-rays. The film stars Sullivan Stapleton, J.K. Simmons, and Charlie Bewley in the lead roles.
It is about a group of Navy SEALs who are assigned to retrieve some gold earlier possessed by the Nazis. Here's the official synopsis of the film according to IMDb:
A team of Navy SEALs discover an underwater treasure of Nazi stolen gold in a Bosnian lake. An updated Kelly's Heroes.
There is a lot of discussion on the internet about whether the film's story is based on a real event.
Is American Renegades based on a true story?
While American Renegades is not based on any true story, it explores a legend involving Adolf Hitler's Nazi party. As per The Direct, it was believed that they hid a large amount of gold somewhere in Lake Toplitz, in Austria. The film incorporates footage from the Second World War. While some of them are real, some of them are made up and simply look authentic.
In American Renegades, the location of Lake Toplitz is changed to a lake in Serbia. Several expeditions have taken place in the real-life lake to find gold, but nothing has been found yet. Some reports have highlighted the death of divers who went to look for gold in the water body. Around £700 million fake notes were recovered from the lake in 1959, which the Nazis had kept to affect the economy of the United Kingdom.
What is the plot of American Renegades?
American Renegades starts in 1944 and showcases Germans moving their gold to Bosnia. The story then moves to 1995, when a bunch of Navy SEALS are involved in the war in Bosnia. Some are tasked to extract the gold now submerged at the depth of a particular lake in Bosnia.
Towards the end, the team is successful in taking the goal out of the lake and flying it out to their base through a helicopter. Since it belonged to France, half of the gold items were given to France, while the other half was distributed among the team members.
Steven Quale is the director, while the script is penned by Luc Besson and Richard Wenk. Besson is also the producer of American Renegades along with Raphael Benoliel. The film was first released in Germany on September 1, 2017, followed by France a week later. The cast members of the film, as per IMDb, are as follows:
- Sullivan Stapleton as Matt Barnes
- J. K. Simmons as Rear Admiral J. Levin
- Charlie Bewley as Stanton Baker
- Peter Davor as General Milić
- Clemens Schick as Petrović
- Diarmaid Murtagh as Kurt Duffy
- Joshua Henry as Ben Moran
- Alain Blažević as Boris
- Sylvia Hoeks as Lara Simić
- Dimitri Leonidas as Jack Porter
- Ewen Bremner as Jim Rainey
Made on a budget of $77.5 million, American Renegades ended up only grossing $2.2 million at the box office. It was also panned by critics and audiences for its overall content and storyline. However, the film was trending on Netflix in February 2025 and enjoyed decent viewership.
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