Sphinx

Lesley-Ann Down is an Egyptologist making her first trip to Egypt, fascinated by the Carter Expedition. A statue vanishes, and she goes on a search for it, with lots of locals, like Frank Langella, John Gielgud, and John Rhy-Davies showing up as she heads down to Luxor.

It's a very slow-moving film, with the magnificent camerawork of Ernest Day and Claude Renoir up and down the Nile valley keeping things visually interesting, if not always in terms of plot. There are vistas of scree, with a single magnificent building on it around Luxor, apparently, with the green of the river's shore a distant promise. Director Franklin Schaffner may have been the cat;'s pajamas as the 1960s ended and the 1970s began, but he was in a slide here; his next movie would be YES, GIORGIO.

A luminous and glamorous production spectacularly shot in Egypt. Woman archaelogist called Erica Baron (Lesley-Anne Down) searches for hidden riches in the tomb of an Egyptian king. She is researching for a paper on Mernephtah, chief architect to Pharaoh Seti I. She meets with unscrupulous art dealer Abdu-Hamdi (John Gielgud) and witnesses him being threatened by black-market dealer Stephanos Markoulis (John Rhys-Davies). Beyond the sealed door was the last undiscovered treasure in Egypt - And it's all hers - If she can get out alive !. Someone is hunting tourists out of season !.

Based on the novel by Robin Cook, and scripted by John Byrum the film benefits from an impressively brilliant scenary, wonderful production design by Oscarized Gil Parrondo and spectacular Egyptian landscapes. Easy-on-the-eye adventure hokum with a beautiful star facing more perils than Indiana Jones as she searches for the long-lost tomb of ancient pharaoh Seti I. It's plotted to maximize confusion, a messy script that takes every opportunity to work in an action sequence, mostly pursuits shot with some shaky camerawork and with a peculiar plot starred by an archeologist searching for a lost tomb. It turns out to be a workmanlike and sometimes thrilling flick that just lacks the surges of real excitement that might have turned into an adventure classy. An amazing, timely and exciting story very well set in Egypt about an archaeologist in danger because of his discoveries. On the whole this Sphinx results to be an average movie , but enteratining enough. It contains a twisted intrigue about an adventurer archeologist along with her mysterious, suspicious lover, both of them undertake a dangerous journey through pyramids , deserts , the busy Cairo , and underground vaults plenty of tombs. Together with Lesley Ann Down who gives a so-so acting, turns up a good cast, such as Frank Langella who's a suitably ambivalent hero, the french Maurice Ronet, Martin Benson, John Rhys-Davies, Saeed Jaffrey. And John Gielgud shows up, rather surprisingly, as the Egyptian owner of an antique shop . Don't bother for the lousy storyline with plenty of flaws and gaps, containing unlikely happenings and a disjointed conclusion. This is a clear case of a lame project that only a best seller, -heavily pre-sold-could have financed.

Highlights the powerful and evocative musical score by Michael J. Lewis. Errnest Day's colorful photograpy makes the most seductive locations. Shot in Egypt and showing real monuments and pyramids , including wide sightseeing. Other locations include Great pyramids Giza , Keops , Kefren , Mizerinos and pyramid of Zoser , Cairo , Luxor and Budapest, Hungary. The direction, by Schaffner, is lively enough to cover most of the holes on the script. Franklyn J. Schaffner made excellent motion pictures such as "The Planet of the Apes", "Patton, " "Papillon" , ¨"Nicholas and Alexandra" , after the flop of his film titled " Islands in the Stream ", in which went on to coincide with the actor of "Patton" , George C. Scott , he decided to embark on a project more commercial and successful as "The Boys From Brazil" ; however , ¨Sphinx¨ ,¨Lionheart¨, ¨Si Giorgio¨ were other box office failures . Rating : 5.5/10 , worthwhile watching for the Egypt lovers.

This could have been Erica Baron: Tomb Raider, 20 years before Lara grabbed the headlines. It's got great locations as anyone who's been to Egypt will know, and a half decent story to go with it. Unfortunately instead of being Lara Croft confident and kick-ass, Erica Baron will scream at almost anything and trip over and bump into everyone and everything in her path (and then scream again for good measure). She'll even scream when a sticking plaster is ripped off someone else's face for Christ's sake! She'll then stop, panic and then run (while flailing her arms around) when things get dangerous. Things definitely moved on in the 20 years after this was made until Lara arrived.

Even as a Dr of Egyptology she's sub-standard. Despite being able to read hieroglyphics, she's clearly never been to Egypt before as she has absolutely no idea about the culture, and even when arriving at the great pyramid, she goes for a camel ride before seeing any Egyptian history! Deary me. When speaking to he locals she'll only attempt to speak English and give up on them before they've had time to gesture or try and communicate. Actually, speaking English to them just makes their faces completely blank as if they've not heard her at all!

Despite this the story moves along to its relatively good ending, despite a shoot out at the end where every bullet hits a nearby jug or vase and never the target!!

All in all, highly recommended!!!

Badly written adaptation of a bad novel and a badly directed film that relies on exotic locations and glitzy set decoration, featuring a beautiful "Egyptologist" who has never before been to Egypt, who takes a taxi from the Nile Hilton to the Cairo Museum (next door to each other), and goes into the tomb of Tutankhamun with a Polaroid camera to "do research". (If the public does not understand why this is laughable, they deserve this film). The title "Sphinx" has nothing to do with the plot, which is loosely about the discovery of a lost tomb. Not exactly PC because all the "good" Egyptians are played by Europeans and the "bad" Egyptians are played by Egyptians. In the opening credits the cast names are spelled out in hieroglyphs, which seems to be the extent of the research wasted on this turkey.

Okay, so Sphinx is not a great movie, but it's not a bad one, either. Funnily enough, with better film craft, it would be no worse than Raiders of the Lost Ark given they traffic in a lot of the same cliches. But that movie had a comic book nostalgia that gave it energy this film lacks. Without the window dressing, all that's left is the simplistic story. Notice I said story. There's not much here in terms of that, but there's a lot of plot. The characters never seem to tire of doing and saying any number of things to keep the movie going. Some are more interesting than others.

Leslie-Anne Warren, who looks particularly lovely here, plays an Egyptologist who gets pulled into various factions of graverobbers hoping to loot ancient Egyptian treasures. If you're a fan of old movies, you've seen this set up a million times before, the difference being this movie tries hard -- mistakenly -- to give it some solemnity that all those cliffhangers in the 1930s and 1940s did not. There's really no need. This is escapism, not drama, something that by the 1970s and 1980s, the people making the movies had forgotten.

Take Steven Spielberg. Like author Stephen King, he just recycled stuff we've seen a million times before. But Spielberg gave it a bit more gloss, turning B movie ideas in expensive amusement park rides that worked especially on audiences born in the 1950s and 1960s. The biggest problem with Sphinx is director Franklin Schaffner, a remarkably workmanlike filmmaker who somehow hit it big with some pseudo epics like Planet of the Apes and Patton. Now, even if you're a fan of no-nonsense, traditional directing, you'll notice how Schaffner seems to have little style or imagination.

The result is Sphinx often looks nice in terms of pure photography but lacks many of the components of great escapism. Add to it some sloppy editing that makes the story hard to follow, and you're left with a good idea never quite done.