Beyond Justice

I never heard of this Italian made film...I caught on Long Islands ch.55 late night movie.. I was amazed.. its a fascinating adventure, beautifully photographed and well acted.. Sustained my interest even at this 2am viewing! It is somewhat cliched, and stereotypic, but an exciting tale well told.. In view of our present world conflict, it gives some insight into the tribal nomadic existences of the various cults that still exist !!, and the mores and values which still persist. Worth seeing...

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.

Someone lent me the DVD of this astonishingly bad film. I would normally have simply put it back in the pile and forgotten about it but I couldn't sleep well at night if I didn't warn people about this grade Z bomb, that makes "Robot Monster" or "Plan 9 from Outer Space" seem superb in comparison. From pathetic story line, through mesmerizingly bad screenplay to abysmal direction and - ultimately - acting that would be laughable, , this film has it all. How in God's name this abomination ever was allowed past the producer's desk is beyond me. I have poor writing skills and even worse cinematographic skills, yet I could have made a better job of this "film" whilst under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. I wouldn't know where to start explaining about the bad points because - like a time warp map of the universe, where all points are both the beginning, middle and end, so this film's bad points actually conglomerate into one hideous melee of garbage.

Well, unless I see the next millennium out, I won't be able to come across a film as bad as this. So I can honestly and fairly give this dog of a film the title "Worst film ever made". Ed Wood - eat your heart out.

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.

A rich, bossy executive's son is kidnapped by her ex-husband, an arab who has been warned to return to his people or face the consequences, which could include her death. When he and the boy arrive at the settlement of his father, the Emir (Omar Sharif), he is informed that, because he has been a bad boy who transgressed against his society's precepts, he will be bypassed and his son, now thirteen, will eventually rule the Emir's people. Meanwhile, the frantic mother (Carol Alt, looking quite elegant) has been put in touch with a specialist in "dirty" operations (Rutger Hauer), who agrees, for a price, to rescue the boy from the Emir's clutches. At this point, the movie begins to slow down as Hauer and his associates penetrate the Emir's lair. There's a lack of imagination and flair to the filming. They just crunch it out. One gets tired of seeing people diving off camels or rolling down sand dunes after they get shot. The film score sounds as if it were written for some other, equally pedestrian movie. And just when you think everything is about to be tied up in a neat package, there's a twenty-minute coda of more gunplay. When you run out of dialogue or plot twists, get out those AK-47s. Does the father pay for his "crime"? Does the kid get saved? Does the Emir say "It is written....?" Does Hauer end up with Alt? Have you ever seen a movie?