It is a truism that it takes a lot of effort to make a bad movie - this one is no exception.I am no lover of yanks but their amazingly simplistic view of the world and their ability to reduce everything to black and white as well as make events (even fictional ones in novels) fit an agenda that bears little or no relationship to complexity of any kind is irritating in the extreme.Wilbur Smith is descriptively verbose but weaves intricate tales that deserve more than has been delivered by this awful mishmash of a movie.Sad really for those who will never read Smith. They will be left with a less than decent portrayal of his Egyptian series, which has to be said is gigantic in its exposition.The Indiana Jones movies were snappy. To attempt to replicate that by manipulating Smith's novels into this production misses out by a country mile.Pathetic except for the photography and Art Malik.

It takes a lot of hard work to make a movie good, but it might take even more work to make one bad - really bad. In this gem everyone succeeds.Let's not talk about plot holes here. Let's talk about craters instead. Ravines. And let's please talk about acting - and directing. The only halfway decent acting performance is by the colonel - or was it a general? And as for his name? It's not given here, so who knows? Credit for his piece de resistance is lost forever.Roy Scheider? Why does he always get these horrible parts? Either he just can't land the good roles or he has terrible taste, and in this turkey he lands another good one and unless he's absolutely desperate for work (which the poor guy might be) he has terrible taste. Playing a heavy named - Grant Schiller? Schiller is German; Grant is not. Who comes up with these stupid names? Oh that's right: the singularly lacklustre Kevin Connor who has not a single impressive credit to his CV and also commits the ultimate insult of directing - or actually refraining from directing.The absolute worst acting in the movie is by Katrina Gibson who shouldn't even be allowed on a sound stage to pluck litter. According to the IMDb, Gibson's been in an episode of Judging Amy. That must be the worst episode ever in that series.Rounding everything out: you can't really have a bad bad movie unless the music is really stupid and annoying, but fortunately Canadian McCauley comes through with flying colours.This one might work on slow kids in the five years of age range but hardly on anyone else. It will bore ten year olds and get them climbing the walls and screaming in protest.Strangely we watched this one all through to the end. We were perversely fascinated by it, mostly and primarily because it was so bad. But recommend it to anyone? Why?It takes a lot of work to make a bad movie, and this one succeeds in all possible ways. And it only makes you appreciate all the more how much work it takes to make a good movie.

After reading both _River_God_ and _The_Seventh_Scroll_, I can't begin to express how disappointed I was with this film. While I agree some poetic license may be admissible, this movie is at constant variance with the books, doing an incredible injustice to the exciting, plausible and wonderful stories written by Wilbur Smith. I can only believe that the writers, director and producers of the movie have never even heard of Mr. Smith, let alone read his work. Smith's vibrant characterizations are converted into wooden stick figures, all historicity is ignored or discounted, the realism of the books has been changed to include phantom monsters more appropriate to a cartoon. And why is an Egyptian henchman speaking Spanish? Geesh, no wonder the movie was made into a TV miniseries! Did Wilbur Smith have any input into the making of this movie? I can't believe that he did. Terrible, terrible movie. If you've read either or both of the books, don't waste your time or money watching this money. You will be sorely disappointed, I assure you.Only a moment of supreme generosity persuaded me to give this movie a ranking of '2', and that only because of the beautiful, sometimes spectacular, photography.

This one looks great! Great costumes, great photography, especially the Ancient Egypt shots are great. But that's it... The actors are really bad... The kid is maybe the worst. The criminals in the opening scenes with the car are from Police Academy or a Bud Spencer movie or something. They look like they don't fit this story at all. Or is it a comedy? And even if it was it is not a good one! Roy Schneider (Blue Thunder!) is the only one here who can act and that tells everything. I bought the DVD without knowing what I would get, it just looked great on the cover. But this is not worth the money.