The Seventh Scroll

I have copies of all of Wilbur Smiths books and have read and re-read them all. I decided to start finding and purchasing DVDs of movies that were made of his books to add to my library. After reading all the above critiques of the mini series on "The Seventh Scroll" and how everyone was upset with how 2 of Wilbur Smith's Egyptian series books were so horribly mangled in this mini-series. I'm going to save my money and re-read the books instead! This reminded me of how upset I was when I saw all of the James Bond movies and couldn't believe how the film industry could butcher and destroy the books written by Ian Flemming. And I certainly do not want to see any movie that mangles the GREAT works of Wilbur Smith the same way The movie and film industry did to Ian Flemming's James Bond books.

Greatest and best movie I have seen for years. Excellent and exciting story, never for a second boring. Wonderful acting, Art Malik as Taita, as the scribe from ancient Egypt being the best. The film is full of emotions and happenings, the parallel way of plots in modern age plus in ancient times was done without disturbing the flow of events. Great credibility all through the film. When can I buy it on video?

If you are a real Wilbur Smith fan, The Seventh Scroll TV mini series will probably be very hard to watch till the end. At least, for me it was. The script is way too simple; a lot of times the dialogs do not fit the character speaking, especially hapi's dialog. Besides that, the acting is unrealistic. For example, the "bad guys" at the beginning of the film look more like a caricatures then criminals. The only actor giving away some form of performance it the one playing Taita. He is probably also the one with a script closest to the text from the books.

If only a real movie director would have the courage to take on of Wilbur Smiths series and make it into one or more descent movies...

Well, I've read the book first and thought: wow would this be cool to see in a movie, than I started searching and found there was already a movie made of it... I bought the movie a week ago on DVD and watched it.. they did it awfully wrong! at first this kid Hapi,who isn't any character in the book, then the mix between the two books ('the river god' and 'the seventh scroll') than Nicolas needing funds while in the book he himself is actually the funder, the whole thing about the Hyksos is wrong also.. Taila is supposed to have invented the lightweight-chariot.. the whole thing about the tomb is also very wrong.. there is supposed to be a channel that has some kind of vacuum-suction around it.. the tomb itself was made in a maze with only a possibility to pass if one knows the rules of the ancient boa-game. There was nothing in the movie about Nicolas being English and Royan was a Coptic-Christian in the book, not a Muslim..This list is endless.. There were only a few things good about the movie, the actors which played Royan, Nahood, Taita, Boris, Mick and Tessay were well-chosen, the rest were just parodies of the characters in the book, Rasfer was the worst, it didn't get even close to the character that was in my head while I wrote the book.. It is such a shame that such a great book is mutilated in such a bad reproduction... I wonder why Wilbur Smith ever gave his permission for this..

Duraid Al Simma (Tony Musante) and his wife Royan (Karina Lombard) are searching for the tomb of pharaoh Mamosis (Edmund Purdom). The villain Schiller (Roy Scheider) hears about it and steals their information, hoping to become the famous discoverer of the tomb himself, not to mention the great treasure supposed to be hidden there. Duraid is killed, but with the help of the adventurer Nick Harper (Jeff Fahey), his widow Royan keeps the chase for the tomb going.

This present day storyline is sharing the running time in equal parts with the events in Egypt thousands of years ago, where we learn how Mamosis wants to marry Lostris (Katrina Gibson) although she is in love with the warrior leader Tanis (Philip Rhys). A clever slave named Taita (Art Malik) helps his mistress to escape from the pharaoh while planning the tomb that our modern day heroes will search for. The link between the two storylines is the boy Hapi (Jeffrey Licon) who is the illegitimate son of Lostris, but adopted in our time by Royan due to some mystic snake god's basket travel arrangement (don't ask me how that worked).

Anyway, it a story that fills 250 minutes without too much boredom. The second of the three episodes seems to stretch the story a bit, when the heroes get captured and escape, just to be captured again and escape again. But by the third episode, when the race gets to its climax and deadly traps await the explorers, everything is fine again. This is not a masterpiece of its genre, though. There are some awful early CGI effects (the snake not really squeezing its victim's neck, the Windows 98 waterfall), some bad acting (the blonde assistant of Schiller is completely useless), some clichèd story bits and so on. But all in all, it's ok for TV entertainment and I rated it with an average 5 of 10.