Beyond Justice

The synopsis on the video box hardly do any sort of justice to this movie, depicting it as more of a regular kidnapping story where a mother hires a rather unorthodox agent to trail her strange husband. But this movie has none of that. Filmed in Morroco, it is more like a modern tale of adventure in the deserts of Morroco complete with sword fights and camel rides.

A rich woman's husband, son of a Morrocan Prince, takes their son to Morroco with plans to live in grandfather's palace. While the grandfather declares the grandson heir to the throne and prepares him for living in the Holy Land and ridding himself of the life he once knew, the woman hires a few men (including Rutger Hauer) to get her grandson back. And it turns out to be a very dangerous mission.

This is a fantastic adventure film, though a pretty violent one, since it's a deadly mission and one that, although the main premise involves a kidnapping, continues on to involve all sorts of wild intrigue including that of a feuding Morrocan tribe. It seems so unusual because it is an ancient tale told in a modern setting when the family is taken away from their modern conveniences into a highly hostile desert scenery with completely different customs and culture.

These Italian filmmakers have given us something that I would less consider an action movie and more of an adventure tale. I would definitely recommend this movie if you're in the mood for something really different.

This film is a lazy studio money grab. They took a five hour mini-series called Law of the Desert (AKA: Maktub) and chopped it down to around 90 minutes and released it as an action movie. The trouble is that the original mini-series was a whole lot more than an action movie. Hours of material were left on the cutting room floor including assassination attempts and the entire subplot involving Elliott Gould.

The editing is so sloppily done that some of the cuts will jar you. People disappear and reappear in inexplicable ways. And quite egregiously, Omar Sharif's character arc was largely removed from the ending.

On a positive note, many of the action sequences were largely left intact.

Other than the enjoyment of looking at Carol Alt in her business suits, this is a pretty good cast wasted. To start with, I couldn't care less about her rich girl persona and her snot son. The kid looks like a refugee from Leave It to Beaver. He is so happy all the time. Even when he punches out the big kid in the principals office. Rutger Hauer is hired to go retrieve the boy from his Arab father who is an aspiring Emir in a desert colony. Boy, it's hard to watch what the likes of Omar Sharif became. Anyway, they blast their way in and attempt the rescue. She comes along, of course, because she is an Alpha female, rich, corporate executive, which qualifies her to fight against Arabs with machine guns. Mostly she hides; but she is there. I'm sure a fair amount of money was spent on this. There is some nice desert cinematography. It's just too many deaths, done easily, to get back that little jerk kid, who, in actuality, couldn't fight his way out of a grocery sack. Too much shooting and not enough plot.

If you are a big fan of Rutger Hauer you might even *enjoy* this movie, otherwise, don't spend your time on this one. The music is awful and so are the action scenes, if you want to see Rutger's action film i recommend seeing rather split second or arctic blue.

If you like to see camels grunting and crying in the desert and plenty of Arabs with swords clashing in the bright sun along with Omar Sharif, (Emir Beni-Zair), you will enjoy this film. The film deals with a very pretty and sexy gal with beautiful eyes named Christine Sanders, (Carol Alt) whose son has been taken away from her by her ex-husband who is the son of an Arab Chieftain back to Morocco. Christine is a very successful business woman in New York City and is also very wealthy and she hires a man named Tom Burton,(Rutger Hauer) to hunt down her son and bring him back home. However, Christine wants to go along with Tom and she eventually convinces him to let her go along and I think she bit off more than she can chew on this dangerous adventure in the desert. During some very action scenes, Christine and Tom do find time to passionately embrace each other and their kisses were very very long. Omar Sharif, Elliott Gould gave great supporting roles to this film which is very entertaining and different. Enjoy.